


The Enemy of my Enemy

by GhostNobody



Category: Alien vs Predator (2004)
Genre: F/M, Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-11-18 15:35:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostNobody/pseuds/GhostNobody
Summary: This is going to be a tale of a very unlikely romance, a human male and a Xenomorph queen find themselves in a hell that neither of them could have imagined in the wildest nightmares, but if they're going to survive then somehow they're going to have to learn to work together and together maybe they can prove that not only is the enemy of my enemy my friend but also sometimes so much more.





	1. Pushing the Envelope.

Prologue.  
New Britannia, a shining jewel in humanity’s race to colonise the stars. It had started life in much the same way as any of the other human colonies, a wild untamed place full of mystery and intrigue which humanity had conquered through its sheer force of will and determination.  
Or at least that’s what the brochures would have you believe, it used to be called LV 476 when it was first colonised by the company for its rich mineral deposits, but after the discovery of a substance called hydronite in the water the colony boomed into a thriving city in a matter of a few short years.  
Hydronite was an unlimited source of free energy, it was a spectacularly complex hydrogen molecule that could be used to produce obscene amounts of energy for a very very small amount of the stuff and given all the water on the planet which was similar to Earth in the fact that it was over seventy percent water made for a very powerful industrial machine.  
What was better was the fact that when it was burned or used in the fusion process it produced no harmful emissions or toxic waste, it simply produced water and oxygen and given that the water produced would reintroduce itself to the atmosphere and become recombined again with the unique elements found in the rare atmosphere of this planet it would simply end up containing yet more hydronite, it truly was a natural marvel and it produced an unlimited source of energy which the colonists capitalised on this.  
Now when they’d discovered this the colonists had been under contract to the Wayland Yutani company for exclusive mineral mining rights, so in other words any mineral that they extracted from the place had to be sold to Wayland Yutani, but after a rather smart solicitor who had given up the bar for the chance at a new life went over the contract they found that hydronite was not part of this agreement as it only covered any fossil or mineral types, it didn’t cover any liquids or gasses found.  
So rather than rub it in Wayland Yutani’s faces they simply kept quiet and carried on selling them minerals which kept them happy and out of their hair, while on the quiet they began the extensive process of switching all their power systems over to run on hydronite.   
This meant that everything they sold to Wayland Yutani even at their crappy prices was returning much more than the company had ever intended, simply because everything they dug up was returning nearly one hundred percent profit because hydronite made all their power consumption and extracting processes run for pretty much free.  
By the time Wayland Yutani discovered what the colonists were doing it was way too late, the colony had been transformed from a simple town, to a city and then onto a sprawling white mega city in less than a hundred years, they had so much economic might and legal clout that every attempted claim that Wayland Yutani attempted to make to the wondrous hydronite was shot down in every court that they took it to, so by way of petty revenge the company cut all ties with the colony and refused to buy any of its mineral exports, but it was way too little too late, the leaders of the colony had foresaw this eventuality and had taken steps of their own to counter them, they’d begun putting out feelers to the rest of the Galactic community, by now the colony had made contacts all over the Galaxy and with the legal shackles now removed they were easily able to start up trade with both other colonies and other companies, even trading with the Yaujta who since the end of the hybrid wars as humans called them or the purity wars as they’d called them had become rather hospitable to the right oomans as they called them, New Britannia providing them refined hydronite to power their massive clan ships in exchange for various technologies and weapons, in fact it was now a rather common occurrence for the planet to have one of these massive ship’s in orbit for refuelling.  
Pretty soon pretty much every land mass on the planet had been colonised and New Britannia had become a shining Galactic hub of trade and commerce, not to mention a true melting pot of cultures and even species as the planet attracted others to move there in the hope of a new life.  
It truly had become far beyond the paradise that the original colonists that first struck its soil had envisioned, but despite all their technological marvels and economic clout they were not prepared for what was to come their way, a true horror of unbound magnitude that moved with relentless force tearing through any and all unlucky enough to get in its way was sweeping across their happy peaceful world and by the time they became truly aware of it, it was already too late.

 

 

Chapter 1: Pushing the Envelope.  
The first noise he became aware of was a highly irritating repetitive bleeping noise, it seemed to pierce the darkness of his skull like a nail being repeatedly struck into a raw nerve. The noise though irritating and painful seemed to be dragging him towards it at high speed and despite his protests it dragged him almost screaming into a world filled with light.  
The first thing he saw as he opened his eyes was a world of blurry light as his eyes attempted to focus, his head felt like it was filled with mud and every though felt like it was having to fight its way to the surface, the first one to make it was ‘What the hell is going on?’.  
As his vision started to clear he became aware of a green light passing over him repeatedly and it hurt his eyes to look at it so he shielded them, then a very mechanical female voice announced that he had passed all medical checks and welcomed him back from hyper sleep, before announcing that he had been in stasis for three earth months.  
As the green light had now stopped frying his vision he was able to focus his eyes properly and see what appeared to be glass in front of his face, with a series of whirrs and clicks from all around him the glass lifted up and away from his face, instantly he felt a rush of air come from all around him as his body was now exposed to the atmosphere outside of the tube, suddenly a face appeared in front of him, it appeared to be a rather pretty young black woman with dreadlocks that kinda made her look like an upside down medusa with a massive smile plastered on her face.  
“Wakey Wakey Aiden it’s time to start the party!!” she said in a rather loud and rather enthusiastic voice that hurt his still groggy head,   
“Eh what? Party? What party?” he asked as he tried to shake the mud out of his head, slowly but surely he could feel memories like bubbles rising to the surface in his head and popping back in to reality,   
“Oh come on now O’Connor don’t tell me that the mighty Reaper is actually human and suffers from hyper amnesia like the rest of us lowly mortals?” she said with an upside down grin that seemed to light up her whole face,   
“Ha bloody ha Tina” he said as her name popped back into his head, Tina Fuller was the team doctor and a damn good one, a fully trained and experienced battlefield surgeon, the amount of times he’d seen her pulling bullets out of people while others were busy putting them back into others was unreal, when the shit royally hit the fan the playful young American woman would turn into the queen of ice, the contrast was absolutely amazing to witness, while not working she was the life and sole of the party and she was always running around either pranking the others on the team or planning to prank them, hence her love of making Aiden blush as she was the only one out of all of them that could find the chinks in his otherwise super strong armour, but when the chips were down there was no other person in existence that you wanted to see coming to get you, in fact it was her steely nerves under fire that had earned her the codename Ice.   
Still grinning she leaned down into his pod and gripped his right arm and pulled him up right, for the briefest of seconds he was totally bemused by the sight that met him as she pulled his arm away from his body and he saw what looked like a black robotic arm, but then the memories of that day popped back into his head as well and a soft groan escaped him.  
As she got him sat up right Tina moved around to his front and shone a light into his eyes while running a small hand scanner over him, she was about 5’5 and pretty well built looking like someone had chiselled her well-muscled frame out of solid black granite, it didn’t help that she was dressed in a set of tight grey under shorts and matching under top that hugged her curves tightly, her long dreadlocks ran right down her back to her wide hips “Any sickness or nausea?” she asked in a more professional voice now, he shook his head, but more to clear the remaining mud out of it than to answer her question but it served both purposes, “Well your bio systems are looking good, mighty good actually” she said with the grin returning and giving him a small wink to go with it, he gave her a small smile, he remembered that Tina always made a point to flirt with him at every opportunity, probably because she knew that it made him blush and she got a kick outta it, but the rub was that he could never tell if she was serious or not, she never did anything like this with any of the others, only with him.   
She continued scanning running it over the side of his head, followed by his chest and then finally his arm, “Cybernetics and Nano systems have all woken up and are all showing green, so you’re good to go Reaper” she said with a smile, then she closed down her scanner and with a final wink at him she walked over to a another pod, as he watched her go he couldn’t help but watch the way she rolled her hips as she walked, he couldn’t help but thinking that she really did have a rather nice bum, but before she got to the next pod she glanced back over her shoulder and caught him looking at her, she gave him a grin and cocked her hip which caused him to blush so bright that he could feel his face lighting up, silently he cursed under his breath, looks like she won this round.  
As he looked around the hyper sleep bay Aiden could see the other nine pods of his team, they were all opening one at a time and he could see various heads poking up out of the pods each sharing the same look of confusion and disorientation, he empathised with them as he truly hated hyper sleep, it always felt like a few bottles of Tequila and a joy ride in a cement mixer.  
Aiden O’Conner was a member of a team known only as the Spirits, they were a covert operation that specialised in dealing with the weird and the worst kind of problems, they were set up to operate outside of the usual rules of engagement and to deal with circumstances that no other unit had the capacity to deal with, it was set up by the governments of various species to counter threats that fell outside of the expertise of either normal armies like the Colonial Marines of Earth, or even special forces like the Yaujta Halkrath core.  
The cells were made up of exceptional individuals taken from a massive verity of walks of life, everything from military, police detectives and private eyes, bounty hunters, doctors and even scientists. The criteria of joining the Spirits was exceptionally high and you never applied to join, there was no forms to fill out, no job interview, they simply approached you and if you met their standards then you simply disappeared, no trace of your pervious life would be allowed to remain, you simply evaporated into the ether.  
The training was the most intense of any military anywhere, physical training that pushed every operator to their breaking point and beyond, each operator was trained in everything from advanced combat tactics right through to scientific analysis, they were trained to operate as a team or as individuals, so they needed to know every element of each other’s jobs while at the same time maintaining their own speciality, this meant that if a member of the team was either incapacitated or killed then another could step straight into their shoes and carry on, or if the operator found themselves working alone they’d have a huge plethora of skills to call on to get the job done.  
Climbing slowly out of his hyper sleep pod Aiden placed his feet on the cold metal floor of the bay, the sudden cold shock helped to clear his head of some of the remaining mud and heled to focus his mind, pushing off away from the hyper sleep pod he wobbled a little on his unsteady rubber band legs, the first few steps were always the worst after hyper sleep, they were always the gateway to a good day where you reached your locker with a proud strut, or a not so good day where you kissed the bulkhead face first.  
Today was not a good day, Aiden groaned as he pushed himself up off the floor in the press up position before climbing on to his knees to catch his breath, as he did he was glad to see he wasn’t the only one of the team getting intimate with the bulkhead, to his left he noticed a rather large frame lifting itself off the bulkhead before letting loose a muffled stream of curses in Yaujta. The large frame belonged to the team’s infiltration and tracking specialist T’shara and although the sight of an eight-foot-tall female Yaujta kissing the bulkhead before swearing at it was kinda funny Aiden held his tongue, her codename wasn’t Inferno for nothing, he had personally witnessed this fiery female tear enemy combatant’s limb from limb with her bare hands and that was when she was calm and collected, when she was pissed she was like a Mak hover truck with feet.  
Getting to his feet he stumbled in the fallen female Yaujta’s direction, “You ok T’shara?” he asked offering her a hand up, the young female looked up at him with fire in her bright grey eyes, but as soon as she saw whose hand was being offered to her the fire cooled, Aiden knew that there were very few that T’shara would ever dare to accept help from, the very proud and stubborn female would rather die than admit she needed help with anything, but he for some reason was one of these very few.  
“I pauking hate hyper sleep” she said in her gruff voice before accepting the offered hand, Aiden pulled the massive female up from the floor and quickly steadied her as she wobbled unsteadily on her feet, as he looked at her Aiden couldn’t help but be reminded of urban camo patterns as he looked at the colours of her skin, it was all grey white and black swirls and patches, she shook her head to steady her balance and it caused her long dreadlock like appendages to whip around and catch him across his side,   
“Hey steady on with those things or we’ll both end up on the floor again” Aiden said as he deflected some of them with his free arm, T’shara simply made a humph noise but he could have sworn he saw a faint smile flash over her mandibles,   
“If we fall then we fall together” she said, he laughed softly as he helped the large female to steady herself as they slowly made their way towards the lockers, he did have to admit that she was rather striking for a Yaujta, but he’d never really looked at their species in that way despite being told more than once by various members of their species that his multitude of scars made him rather attractive to females of their kind, all he could say to this was that they really had very odd tastes as he thought his scars made him look horrific.   
At first he’d thought that they were just trying to wind him up, although Yaujta were not known for their sense of humour when they did decide to play a prank it was always a real doozy and as Aiden had found out when spent quite an amount of time with their species when they’d trained with the Halkrath, but it had become rather glaringly obvious that they had not been joking when he had narrowly managed to dodge the amorous attentions of more than one of the female members of the Halkrath, in fact it had been this that had given him a lot of respect for their combat prowess as he remembered one particular session of hand to hand combat where one of their senior instructors had taken rather a liking to him, she had decided to impress him with her melee prowess by pummelling the shit out of him and pinning him to the ground, the words that she’d whispered into his ear as her heavy frame pinned him to the training mats still sent shivers down his spine and not the good ones.   
But he did have to say that none of the Yaujta females he had met there had come close to T’shara in the form of looks, her face was very feminine and her eyes burned with a rich deep intelligence, in fact most of those that he had met in the Halkrath were missing most at least one body part which for some reason always seemed to be either a mandible or an eye and those were the ok looking ones, but despite having been with the Halkrath for a number of years T’shara had all of her limbs and appendages intact, she had her share of scars but somehow they just seemed to add to her already formidable and rather striking form and given all the combat she’d seen she was either really lucky or really good at her job and having seen her fight Aiden was convinced that it was both.  
Fortunately, both his and T’shara’s lockers were right next to each other so the hobbling bandy legged pair didn’t have to make any diversions and headed in a straight albeit very wobbly line to their destination. Letting go of the massive Yaujta female she proceeded to lean on her locker door as he did the same with his, they shared a knowing glance before each of them turned and placed their left hands on the bio metric scanner to the left side of each locker door, a green line of light instantly swept over Aiden’s organic hand bathing it in a soft lime green light, “Bio print accepted, identifying Sargent Aiden O’Conner, codename Reaper, Spirit team six, Assassination and Sabotage specialist first class, access granted” a female computerised voice said rather loudly, from his left he heard “Bio print accepted, identifying Corporal T’shara Shadow Sight, codename Inferno, Spirit team six, Infiltration and Tracking specialist first class, access granted” coming from T’shara’s locker.  
The large metallic grey door in front of Aiden slid open with a hiss, these lockers were more like mini wardrobes than lockers, each of the team pretty much lived out of them so they needed to be pretty big to contain all their gear. But unlike pretty much every other member of the team who decorated the inside of their lockers with pictures of people or places or even posters, Aiden’s was completely bare. Spike their tech and computer specialist whose real name was Harry Ranald always made a point of teasing him about this, Harry was a pretty skinny black kid from one of the colonies who spoke with the deepest voice you’d ever heard in your life, which was pretty funny when you saw how animated and hyper active he was. He was the baby of the team at only just turned twenty but he had a mind like a computer and an eidetic memory to boot.   
Watching him working on computer code was like watching a composer composing a sonnet, he was recruited when he was imprisoned when he was caught after hacking into a Wayland Yutani space station and turning the place into a giant disco, the kid was ever the prankster even now after having been through Spirit training and although he used to piss the team off quite regularly with his shenanigans, like the time he made Tina’s medi comp sing Yankee doodle dandy every time she pressed any button, he was like everyone’s kid brother and they were all fiercely protective of him, even T’shara who he was forever pranking in the vainest of hope of making the massive Yaujta female smile even if it was only once, she would be the first to march into hell to beat the devil’s arse before carrying him outta there, but then she’d probably be the first to knock him straight back through said gates when she found that her holo mirror had been reprogramed to make her look like a six year old human girl again.   
‘A bare locker is like a bare heart, you need to fill it with those you love or want to love!!” he’d always say, then there was that day he’d had bright idea to hack into Aiden’s locker locks and put a poster up inside it, Aiden might have laughed at it, if it hadn’t been digital mock-up of T’shara posing in a bikini albeit a really rather good one, the level of detail had been rather astounding, it was so good that it pretty much looked real, the problem was she’d been standing right next to him when he’d opened the locker door, at first Aiden thought T’shara was going to go nuclear and stuff him into his own locker head first, but she just slowly turned on the spot and pretty soon there were loud yelps of ‘I’m sorry!!’ and ‘It was a mistake!’ along with one final one of ‘I was just trying to help!! I thought Reaper fancied you and I was just trying to give him a little push, you’d make a great couple!’ being heard from around the ship accompanied with the sounds of running footsteps and the thunder of whole lot of angry Yaujta female in hot pursuit.  
As he was putting on his skin tight black thermal regulation suit Aiden softly chucked to himself as the memories of that came back to him, T’shara who was doing the same next to him looked at him curiously, “What’s funny?” she asked, he shook his head,   
“Oh nothing, I just remembered that poster Spike put up in my locker that time” he said smiling at her, suddenly he saw an unusual look in her eyes, it looked like hurt, but it was only there for the briefest of seconds before they returned to normal, then she just made a noise like a humph while looking away from him.   
Aiden gave himself a mental slap, he’d realised that he’d probably just hurt T’shara’s feelings by making it sound like he was taking the piss out of the way she looked, he’d always been rather poor with women, he had a real habit of saying the first thing that came into his head without thinking sometimes and a lot of the time that was really what they didn’t want to hear, he just couldn’t understand them or how they felt, it wasn’t for lack of confidence or anything like that, he just didn’t know how to talk to them or how to read subtle hints or signals that they gave off, it had become the standing joke among the team that not only was he immortal but that he’d spend eternity alone.  
As he strapped on his battle armour over his thermal suit Aiden kept glancing at T’shara out of the corner of his eye, he couldn’t be sure but he could have sworn that she was stopping herself from looking in his direction, every time she went to move her head in his direction she would seemingly notice and snap her head back the other way, she was definitely angry with him, but for some reason that again he couldn’t identify whenever she was angry with him she always acted differently than to when she was angry at any of the others, when she was angry at one of them everyone on the ship knew about it even those in hyper sleep because nothing wakes you up quicker than a Yaujta battle roar, but with him, she would just ignore him.  
As he snapped his cybernetic arm through the modified chest piece of the Spirt battle armour he decided that he was going to have to try and make it up to her somehow, he glanced down at his locker while deep in thought, it now only contained his helmet as he was wearing the rest of the Spirit suit as it had been named by the team, it was modular armour made up of snap and lock sections that was covered in what kinda resembled interlocking dragon scales made of Tritanium which was titanium’s bigger and badder cousin, while the light weight black scaled armour completely encased the rest of his body his cybernetic right arm was completely exposed right up to his shoulder met his chest where it was sealed to prevent the internal atmosphere leaking. The arm’s outer armour was made out of a substance called Duratanium which made even Tritanium looked like wet shit roll, but the stuff was exceptionally expensive and was rare as fuck to get hold of, it was almost exclusively used in the construction of battle ship hulls and reactor cases, but this arm was completely encased in a quarter inch Duratanium skin with all of its internal components being made out of the same stuff, it was almost certainly more expensive than the entire ship they were currently on and every piece of equipment on it, times two.  
As he picked up his armoured helmet Aiden glanced at the now apparently sulking T’shara, she was only about halfway through putting on her armour, her pace had apparently been slowed by whatever was on her mind, Aiden searched for something to say to hopefully make up for making her feel bad and in typical fashion he settled for the first thing that popped into his head, “You know what T’shara? Spike did a pretty good job with that poster, I shoulda kept it, I think you’d look pretty good in a bikini” he said with a smile as he walked past her hurriedly as he headed for the meeting room, his pace was so rapid that he didn’t have time to notice T’shara’s mandibles drop open as she stared at his back with a mixture of confusion and shock in her eyes as he quickly made his way out of the room his heart hammering in his reinforced chest the entire time, well given that no projectiles hit him in the back it must have made her feel better, or at least that’s what Aiden argued with himself as he headed up the corridor.  
Aiden was the first to arrive in the Ghost’s Shadow’s meeting room which everyone on the team simply called Camelot, it was circular room which at its centre had a large circular holo-projector which pretty much doubled as a place for the team to stick their drinks on while they were discussing their current job, it was massive sliver coloured table with a glowing green disc in the middle of it and given it was surrounded by ten chairs and the name the team had given the meeting room it just seemed rather fitting that it was just called the round table.   
Standard procedure was that none of the operators in the cell was told anything about the job until they reached their destination coordinates, form there the ship would hook up with a comms buoy which would have been left for them with a heavily encrypted set of orders and instructions. Each Spirit cell was made up of ten members, eight ground operators, a piolet who could fly anything that they were given from a fighter to a dreadnought class battle cruiser or even a Yaujta clan ship and a officer who acted as a Sig Int, or signals intelligence officer, their job was to give the team orders while providing real time intelligence and updates using the ship’s sensors and anything and everything they could hack into on the ground.  
Most people would have thought that the last two jobs would have been the sweetest gigs being on the ship far away from the shit that inevitably would hit a verity of fans, but all Spirt officers were vastly decorated veterans who had cut their teeth on verity of battlefields and sitting in one place was never usually their foray, but it was their vast experience that usually meant that they saw problems before the team did, as for the pilot they would be expected to get the ship in no matter the risk and extract the team for whatever shit storm they found themselves in after the job was complete and if you think flying a couple of tons of bullet and missile magnet into a combat zone is easy or fun then you’re the crazy one.  
Less than a minute after Aiden had taken his seat Spike bounded into the room, “Reaper how the fuck did you do that!!? What the hell did you say to Inferno you have to tell me man!!?” he almost yelled as he dropped into his chair next to Aiden, it was pretty much second nature for each of them to call each other by their codenames rather than their real ones, but his words caused Aiden’s heart to sink,   
“Oh shit she’s pissed at me ain’t she?” he said with a voice filling with dread, Spike’s face broke into a confused smile,   
“Pissed? What are you on about man? She’s fucking smiled!!” Spike almost yelled at him, Aiden looked confused at this,   
“What?” he said to check that he’d heard him correctly, Spike’s animated rant continued at this,   
“I know right? I mean I didn’t even think it was possible for Inferno…..” he started to say but before he could finish more boots could be heard heading down the corridor towards the meeting room and he shushed himself.  
The next two to enter were an odd pair indeed but they were totally inseparable, where you found one the other was never far away, one was a 6’8 mountain of a human male who went by the highly original codename of Tank, his real name was Gregor Haverson and he was a rather gruff and no non-sense Scotsman, his flame red hair and wild beard combined with his fierce blue eyes made him look rather intimidating, but once you got to know him you realised that he was the biggest hearted man you were likely to meet, he was like a living embodiment of the term ‘Gentle giant’ unless you pissed him off, then he was a living embodiment of the term ‘Fucking run’  
Tank was the team’s weapon smith and heavy weapons specialist and if you weren’t intimidated enough by the man himself then you were definitely gonna pay respect to Bertha his pet pulse minigun.  
Bertha was a highly customised minigun that he’d made himself by combining part from a smart gun, a pulse rifle and a minigun together into a rather fearsome machine that could easily kick out ten thousand rounds a minute and combined with the smart gun tracking systems pretty much every round was on target.  
Stood next to him was Meesa Grey Scale, she was only half the size of Gregor but she was more than a match for him in the form of personality, she was a lively and easily excitable member of the Scalathor, they were a race of highly technologically advanced humanoid reptilians who humanity had encountered shortly after the end of the hybrid wars. She kinda reminded Aiden of a chameleon in her scale patterning and by the fact that her skin seemed to change colour to reflect her moods, it was well known among the team that if it was a red day stay the fuck away.  
Meesa also had a small horn on the tip of her snout that curved backwards towards the back of her head, she had told Aiden while they were both drunk that it was for a female to lock her mate in place so they couldn’t run away while mating, he’d laughed at the time but had never been able to pluck up the courage to ask her if she was joking since, but to be fair it wasn’t like she had to use it on Gregor as the pair of them were practically glued together, they’d met when Spirt team had first been formed and had hit it off immediately, what happened next was probably an inevitability but it still shocked everyone when they came back and found them both naked in each other’s arms on the sofas in the common room.  
Before Gregor dropped his rather sizable frame into his own seat he made a point of pulling out Meesa’s chair for her and he got a very loving smile from his reptilian soul mate in return, she swished her rather long thick tail out of the way before taking her seat at the round table as well, Meesa was the team’s assault and breaching specialist, if they had made it she could a figure out how to get into it, “What are ye two wee girlies looking so guilty about over there?” Gregor asked in his gruff highlands accent which only seemed to get higher the angrier he got, a point that Spike had noted and made it one of his missions to get the big Scotsman so angry that only dogs and animals would know what he was saying, he nearly achieved it too when he got the big Scotsman to set his own beard on fire with a modified laser trimmer, the whole team had been singing Burning Love every time they say him they saw him for days after.  
Meesa eyed them suspiciously, “I bet they know why Inferno is smiling all over her mandibles out there” she said in her heavily accented English, instantly both Aiden and Spike both started shaking their heads in denial, but before either of them could start even coming up with excuses they were joined with another two of the team, one was a blonde guy with the most piercing blue eyes that you had ever seen in your life called Doug Fowler, he was the team’s interrogation and information retrieval specialist, his code name was Picasso simply because he loved to paint in his down time and he was rather good at it, pretty much every one of the team had one of his paintings of them in their bunk, well all except for T’shara who had threatened to shove his brushes and oils somewhere that it would be rather difficult for Ice to extract them if he even tried, she really hated having her picture taken.   
With him was Whisper or at least that was her code name, her real name was Misellia Vall Blue, she was the quietest and most reserved member of the team and most of the time if you noticed that she was there it meant that you were looking at her to begin with, she was so quiet that getting more than a sentence out of her was deemed to be quite the privilege among the team, hence Whisper. For some reason this had really surprised everyone when they’d first met her, it was probably the misconception that a cat girl would be somehow playful and rowdy, but she was so completely the polar opposite that it had kinda taken everyone aback, she kinda reminded Aiden of one of the long lost species of Earth called a bob cat, it was probably the little plumes of tan coloured fur that stuck up off the tops of her ears on top of her head, she literally looked every bit like a bob cat that had learned to walk on two legs, she was a member of a species called the Felenis who humanity met just after they’d met Meesa’s race. Her bright golden eyes seemed to bore right into your very soul when she looked at you which is what made everyone begin talking nervously when she looked at them, she was the team’s sniper and long rang combat specialist.  
“Whatcha all talking about?” Doug asked as he and Whisper took their seats at the round table,   
“We were betting that one of these two know why Inferno is smiling” Meesa said causing both Picasso and Whisper to look at Spike and Aiden,  
“I bet it’s something to do with Reaper” Doug said,   
“W-W-Why would you thing that?” Aiden stammered nervously, Doug grinned broadly showing his perfectly white teeth off,   
“Simple because out of anyone here you’re probably the only one of us who could pull that off and let’s be honest it’s definitely not gonna be Spike is it? Look of pure rage, yes, look of I’m gonna rip your arms off beat you with them then shove them up your battered arse, most probably, look of when I catch hole of that skinny fucker who put party poppers in my hyper sleep bunk again then I’m going to shove a party popper up his arse and fire him out of an airlock, definitely, but smiling and looking happy, no sir not a chance, that’s definitely all you” Picasso said still grinning,  
“Hey!” Spike said sounding wounded,   
“Yea I agree” Meesa said,   
“Aye definitely him” Gregor said,  
“I also agree” Whisper said which caused everyone to look at her in surprise not only because she actually spoke but she joined in with a team discussion outside of planning stuff, which was even rarer.  
Aiden sighed heavily as he could feel every set of eyes in the room on him, including Spike’s, then an idea hit him and he lifted his cybernetic arm up and placed it elbow down and hand up on the table, “Alright then yes, I do have a pretty good idea why, but if you want me to tell you you’re gonna have to arm wrestle me for the answer otherwise it goes to my grave” he said smiling, every set of eyes in the room all rolled in exasperation as one,  
“Who in their right mind is gonna be stupid enough to arm wrestle you laddie? I mean I’d be tempted to give it a go if I hadn’t seen you punch through a Tritanium blast door and pull the fucking guy through back through the wee hole with that fucking thing” Gregor said,  
“And why is it going to take an arm wrestling match with you for you to tell us?” Meesa asked,  
“Because I’m gonna need someone a hell of a lot stronger than me to protect me from her wrath if I tell you” Aiden said with a smile.  
Just at that moment the last two members of the ground operators in the form of Ice and Inferno appeared in the doorway, Inferno was no longer smiling but her first glance into the room was directed at Aiden and a look of puzzlement and curiosity settled on her face as she saw him apparently challenging someone to an arm wrestling match, suddenly a mischievous smile passed over Meesa’s reptilian face and Aiden saw it, instantly his heart sank, “Just the person we need, if there’s anyone here who stands a chance of beating him it’s you Inferno” she said, both her and Ice moved around the table to their seats but her eyes never left Aiden,   
“Beat him at what? And why?” she asked curiously as she sat down,   
“Well Reaper here has a secret that he won’t tell anyone, but we all really want to know what it is and he’s promised to tell us but only if someone can beat him at arm wrestling” Meesa said in a rather silky voice, Inferno glanced between them then at all the expectant faces around the table all looking at her, but Aiden’s eyes seemed to be screaming silently,   
“What would make you think that I am stupid enough to even attempt such a thing? Even if I had not witnessed him rip that blast door off its mounting and throw it at that suicide bomber on Allisia prime with my own eyes I would still not wish injury to myself or to risk injuring a valued team mate before a mission” T’shara said in a very matter of fact voice, Aiden instantly breathed a huge sigh of a relief, there were collective groans around the room, but before the conversation could continue two more people walked into Camelot, the first one instantly made very one of them jump to their feet and snap to attention, “At ease Spirits” Captain Francis Carter said in her cold but confident voice, she was a tall strong and very confident looking black woman in her early forties but time had not weathered her looks, she was one of the only two in the room not wearing the Spirt battle armour instead wearing an all in one black jumpsuit like uniform that vaguely showed off her well-kept and very strong looking frame, the only thing that detracted from her looks was the pretty nasty scar that ran from the top of her head right through her right eye to her chin, but even that wasn’t even really in a negative way, it was odd but when looking at her the sheer presence she gave off pretty much made it invisible, her codename was Queen Bee.  
Behind her was another figure and the last of their merry band, a short, stocky and very gruff looking male with a bald head and the wildest brownest beard you’d ever seen in your life stood with his arms crossed over his barrel like chest, he looked like an angry dwarf from a he looked like he’d never in a million years even fit in a cock pit let alone be the best pilot humanity had to offer, but every single one of them here had watched him pull off the impossible to pull their arses out of the fire more than once, like one time that he landed the Ghost’s Shadow on a battle cruiser then took control of it and dived it into a planet’s atmosphere to use it as a flack screen to protect the Ghost’s Shadow from ground fire while following it in through the planet’s atmosphere, his codename was Pegasus but his real name was Duncan Bellwether.  
The Captain and Pegasus to their seats at the round table and everybody sat back down, “So what’s the job here boss?” Spike asked looking at their Captain with a look of respect painted over his face, she was the only one on the ship that he didn’t have the guts to pull a prank on, he’d rather tangle with an angry Yaujta any day of the week then piss off the Queen Bee,   
“As of three months ago New Britannia went completely dark, no response to hails or any attempts of communication of any kind” the Captain said in her cut glass accent,   
All of those gathered here looked at each other with curious looks before returning their looks to her, “Attacked?” Aiden asked, the Captains eyes flicked to him momentarily before she pressed a button on a small remote on her left arm, instantly a glowing green hologram of the planet New Britannia popped up from the centre of the round table,   
“Unknown, but what we do know is that multiple teams from all species have attempted to make contact and have failed and not a single one of them has been heard from again, Humans, Yaujta, Felenis and Scalathor have all sent teams, first off they were civilian aid teams because it was fear that some sort of natural disaster might have befallen them, but almost instantly after the teams set down they were lost, then each species tried standard military but the same thing happened, finally they turned to the special forces of their own kinds” she said clicking the remote so that the image zoomed in to show New London the main capital mega city of New Britannia, “The same thing happened” she said looking at each of them in turn.   
T’shara looked visibly shocked at this, “The Halkrath?” she asked looking right at the Captain, she shook her head,   
“Lost, but that doesn’t mean that their dead people, each of us know the resourcefulness of these teams and their operators, there might be a chance that some of them are still alive down there, certainly I know that if anyone has a chance of surviving whatever is going on down there it would be them, so let’s not lose hope or focus here, if the job wasn’t shit tough and fucked up to all hell then they wouldn’t have called us, we’re the best of what each species here at this table represents and we’re sure as hell going to prove it” the Captain said again looking at each of them in turn,  
“So what are our orders Captain?” Aiden asked,   
“Simple Reaper, get the fuck down there find out what it is and stop it, if that’s not possible locate any remaining or surviving operators or civilians on the planet and get them the fuck out of there, but your first job is to find out just what the fuck is going on down there” she said with a finality in her voice.  
“Intel?” Picasso asked, the Captain shook her head,   
“None to fuck all, no comms and no comm uplinks to link into, hell we can’t even get into the camera network down there, it’s like someone turned off the entire goddamn planet” she said,   
“Well all except for that warning buoy telling everyone to stay the fuck away but not saying fuck all else and it be nice if while they were unplugging the planet they could have turned off those goddamn missiles and Yaujta plasma cannons” Pegasus said in his gruff voice,   
“So no drop zone then?” Meesa asked looking at him, he shook his bald head,   
“Not a chance honey, New Britannia has got the most complex anti-ship flask system that has ever been built, not even a Wasp’s fart could make it through that lot” he replied,   
“Well there is one thing that can make it through” Aiden said looking at him and for the first time since they’d been gathered here he allowed a small grin to cross his face,   
“Aye there is one thing” he said,   
“Oh fuck please don’t say what I think your gonna say” Spike said looking at Aiden,   
“Looks like it’s time to break out the Devil’s door knockers again” he said,   
“Ah fuck I fucking hate those things” Spike said, the Captain nodded approvingly at Aiden,  
“Gear up and get ready Spirits, you’re going in one hour” she said and with that every one of them got to their feet and headed for the armoury.


	2. Breaking Chains.

‘Hey there people, hope everybody enjoyed the 1st chapter of my brand new tale, sorry for the delay in publishing the second chapter but it’s been in beta with my beta reader evilservant2013 and he’s been doing his best to make sure this comes out perfect, so a big thanks to him for pushing me in the right direction and helping me to become better at my craft. As always I extend an invitation to everyone to shout out any ideas or thoughts that you might have, I love reading through people’s ideas and thoughts and sometimes they can help me send my story off down an even crazier path than I originally intended, but that’s all part of the fun right? Using our minds to shape reality how we want it to be and having you all step out of your own heads an into mine for a little while makes me all the happier, stories help people to forget their pains and their problems if only for a little while but any happiness and joy I can bring is a step in the right direction.   
So finally with a big thank you to you all for once again joining me on this journey, this is GhostNobody signing off and saying........on with the show’

 

Chapter 2: Breaking Chains.  
Cold, darkness, fear and pain were her constant companions, with plenty of crushing loneliness thrown in for good measure. For as long as she could remember this had been her life, every so often the unusual humans would come and she knew it meant that more pain was coming her way. But in a weird way she actually began to crave their visits, at least it was a break from the crushing loneliness and boredom that threatened to break her mind every second of every day.  
At least their visits meant that she could escape this dark void that they’d chosen to keep her locked up in. They always took her to the same place, a room filled with bright lights and weird looking human machines, she didn’t know what any of them did but she did know that pretty much every one of them caused her varying degrees of pain. Especially the sharp spiky thing on the long metal arm, oh how she hated that thing, every time they stuck it through her flesh she screeched in absolute agony! but every time she begged them for mercy and pleaded with them to spare her from this pain... her pleas fell on deaf minds. The first few times they’d tried to use it, her acidic blood had dissolved the spike, their frustration at this gave her small merriments.  
But once they’d perfected the metal to resist her blood they’d used it all the more often, not only to pierce her skin. But to explore her various orifices which caused her such intense pain and humiliation that it had nearly broken her mind so many times… How could sentient living creatures be so heartless and merciless to their fellow sentient beings?  
Other machines felt like they burned her skin as they ran unusual lights over it, then there were ones that made her muscles feel as if they were going to tear themselves apart as they made her muscles pulse and flex against her will. The entire time they kept her shackled in some sort of machine that could change her body position at will, even though the humans were on the other side of some sort of shiny wall. Which showed her nothing more than an odd and rather humiliating reflection of herself as she was strapped into some rather unflattering poses. But at least she could still sense them and their thoughts and she wouldn’t give up these trips here for anything. They were her only escape from the crushing loneliness.   
She found human minds very confusing places to tread, they were vast mixtures of confusing emotions and needs. Some of the images she saw while zoning out and taking a stroll in the minds of whoever was on the other side of the shiny wall, was disturbing to say the least. More than a few of them seemed to believe that they could kill her and simply dissect her remains to study her, now this alone should have instilled her with a deep seated hatred of the humans. But there were a few that seemed to restore her belief that not all humans were bad, some of the minds she sensed and walked in were rather beautiful places filled with beauty and love. Although they were rare, she craved and lived for these minds to come her way, as they provided her with the most beautiful escape from her torments. The minds of these individuals almost always seemed to regard her with pity and sorrow, they were almost distressed at how she was treated and what was being done to her. She could feel vast amounts of self-loathing for being part of it, they hated themselves for the masks that they had to wear around other humans to prevent discovery by the other darker humans. The irony of this was that despite her being the one tortured for whatever they could learn from her, she felt sorry for them, at least she had the freedom to be what she was. They had no such joy and were forced to hide within their own skin’s every day for fear of discovery. Discovery of something that humans seemed to fear so much… being different.  
There was one human among the vast number that always oversaw these visits and really stood out from all the others, it was this one human that had really shaped her feelings towards them. While all the dark humans for all their dark thoughts and secret delights in harming her, or causing her pain. None of them had the guts to approach her directly for their overwhelming fear of what she could do to them should she break free or just manage to get hold of them. Even the beautiful different humans, although they pitied her and felt sorrow for her predicament, were not brave enough to approach her directly. But this one, this one was totally different.  
He was one of what she considered to be the beautiful humans, but his mind was strange. Filled with darkness pain and rage that was shackled in his mind like a caged animal, but at the same time it was filled with such beauty and love. Not to mention all the wondrous images that she got to see every time he was around, his mind was much more like an open picture than the others, while with most of them she could barely penetrate their minds just deep enough to see and scratch the surface of their thoughts and feelings. But with him, she could walk through the landscape of his mind like it was an open field. It was probably because he was the only one out of all of them who didn’t fear her, well that and the fact that he was the only one out of any of them who had touched her.  
She still remembered the first time like it had just happened, out of the thirty humans who had been watching her being probed and prodded that day, there had only been one among them who she would consider beautiful. It had been a young female and so she had latched onto her mind to escape the pain that they were inflicting on her body. But as she was trying to walk deeper into the woman’s mind she sensed another had entered the room. The second she felt him, her breath caught in her throat, his mind was unlike any she had ever encountered before. It was the mind of a warrior, but filled with such beauty and pain that it fascinated her. Especially when she realised that one part of this pain was directed at her and what was happening to her.  
Now she could sense that quite a few of the human’s present had a deep resentment, and in the case of a few, outright loathing of this new individual. But each and every one of them shared one trait in common when regarding him, respect.  
From what she could gather from the jumble of their emotions and thoughts, this individual was some sort of powerful warrior among their kind that commanded their respect. And in some cases, outright fear. But she kept hearing the words bug lover and Xeno lover being thrown around in their minds.  
Then an unprecedented act happened, the door to her cell hissed open and this unusual human was sent into her room. As he entered she got her first real look at him with her visual receptors, he was tall for a human about 6’8 which was still kinda short when compared to her 10ft height. He was also rather broad looking, like his impressive frame had been carved rather than born. And his skin was as bright white, she remembered that she couldn’t help thinking that she was willing to bet that the females of his species must compete for his attentions as he was rather aesthetically pleasing, even to her. As he entered she felt an overwhelming surge of an odd emotion from the other side of the shiny wall, it was like they were collectively smug about something. Like they were all expecting something to happen to him, or as some of it cleared in her head, more they were expecting her to do something to prove them right.  
The male that had entered seemed to be carrying something bundled in his arms, she watched him curiously tracking his movements with her head as best she could in the restraints. He walked over to a large metal table and placed the bundle of items down on it and separated them. The first thing he picked up and looked at with curiosity was a set of what appeared to be a pair of human hands that someone had shed the skin from, though why he’d be carrying such things she had no idea so she looked at his mind and heard the words ‘Damn gloves, I mean really?’ his thoughts said. She didn’t know what these gloves were or what function they served, but if this oddly beautiful human didn’t like them then she decided that neither should she. So she decided to vocalise her agreement with him letting out a hiss, he turned to look at her and she saw his eyes for the first time. They were filled with curiosity and power, but at the same time not a single drip of fear, “You don’t like gloves either eh big girl?” he said in a voice so soft and melodic that it made her head swim. Then he did something that shocked her beyond any thoughts or words, he walked over to her and placed his bare hand on the crown of her head and lightly stroked it.  
The feeling was like never she’d ever imagined in her life, as he did it he spoke to her softly, “Don’t worry there big girl, I don’t need no stinking gloves” he said. She could feel the soft warmth of his human skin and the gentleness of his touch sent shivers through her of a feeling that she’d never felt before. It was highly pleasant and the second he removed his hand from her she was instantly filled with a craving for him to return it, she actually fought against the shackles and tried to crane her neck in order to make her head connect with his hand again. But instead of being shocked at her sudden outburst of movement like all the humans behind the shiny wall, he remained perfectly calm. And for some reason, that she didn’t understand, she found herself liking when he exposed his teeth to her, “Like that huh big girl?” he said and to her utter relief and delight he placed the hand on her head again.   
“Don’t worry I’m not like them I won’t hurt you no matter what they say” he said raising his voice towards the end of that sentence and obviously directing it at the other humans. Without realising she was doing it her throat began to make an unusual sound that to her own ears sounded like a low thrumming at the pleasure of his touch. But again, and to her utter despair he removed his hand and returned to the table, again she struggled desperate now to feel that way again. He swiftly returned to her side this time carrying one of the items he’d brought in, it appeared to be a small square patch of cloth, “They want me to take some sample from your skin girl, but don’t worry I won’t hurt you, I promise you that” he said, for some reason she couldn’t understand at all she trusted this human implicitly. She knew that when he said it that he meant it, so slowly she’d lowered her head and allowed him to swab her, he’d been true to his word.  
That had been the first time she’d met the human who called himself Tyler, unfortunately his visits to her were rare as the rest of the humans seemed to really resent if not outright hate him for reasons that were beyond her. But what she knew was that if it had not been for this particular human showing her the kindness and gentleness that he did, she was convinced she would have gone insane from the pain and loneliness that they inflicted on her. Especially the loneliness, her kind were highly social creatures living in huge groups, though how she knew this she wasn’t certain as she’d never met another of her kind. But deep in her mind she could see it as clear as day, hundreds if not thousands of them all living in the same hive together sharing their thoughts and feelings with each other. She knew that there were others here as she could feel them faintly from time to time, but try as she might to reach out to them with her mind, she couldn’t make the connection with them.  
So it was her connection with Tyler that kept her mind in one piece while they kept her here, she began to cherish his visits to her as if they were a days of celebration. It also hadn’t taken her long to realise that she shared some sort of very strong bond with him, as she could access his mind rather easily, especially when he touched her. The first time she walked in the landscape of his emotions, his thoughts, hopes, and dreams she thought she was in heaven, it was like the perfect way to escape her void of loneliness and despair. But what shocked her the most was that he seemed to know that she was in there, and he just let her be rather than try to force her out like all the other humans did when she tried to gain entry into their minds. He just let her gallivant and run free through his memories, almost like he could sense what joy and happiness it gave her to live parts of his life through his eyes.  
She especially loved seeing the memories of his mate and his hatchlings, they were memories that were filled with such joy and happiness what she could happily bask in them for hours at a time given the chance. Though she couldn’t help but feel the odd pang of jealousy regarding the human female who had been lucky enough to claim this male for her own. Although she still remembered the time when she accidently wandered into the memories of how his hatchlings were conceived, and while part of her wanted to run to another part of his mind, another part of her made her stay and watch the highly intimate act. She found herself overwhelmed by the incredibly level of intimacy and sensuality human mating involved, especially between two that shared this bond that they called love. It was a mixture of emotions like none she had ever dared to even hope was possible in her dark little pain filled world. Although she obviously couldn’t put herself into his female’s view from only his memories, she could only try and imagine what it felt like. However, given the expressions and vocalisations that he remembered her making, it must have been an incredible feeling. And as beautiful as it was, she couldn’t dare to hope that one day she would have a male of her own to make her feel like that, to show her the love and kindness that he showed her.  
But as beautiful as those memories were, it was a bitter sweet thing being able to see them. As every time she was forced to disconnect from his mind and return to her dark cold void, it made her despair a hundred times worse for a while. She remembered what it was like for her after the first time she walked in his memories, she had nearly broken herself trying to escape from that cage of hers. To live in such joy and then to have it torn from her was unbearable, it made her realise just what a real and living hell her life was. She had screeched tears of agony and pain for hours afterwards. But despite all the horrors it brought her, she was like an addict, every time she was around him she couldn’t help herself. It really didn’t help that he was so gentle and kind towards her, always stroking her head or her arms and talking to her in that sweet sweet voice of his. She had even considered that if she ever did break out, she would finding his mate and challenging her for him. But in her heart, she knew to who his heart belonged and it wasn’t to her, but she still felt that he was wasted on a human female.  
But little did she know that pretty soon her cold dark world was about to get a whole lot bigger. It had started like pretty much every other day so far, nothingness… hours and hours of nothingness. Suddenly, out of the darkness, raw and powerful emotions bombarded her sensitive mind. They were so powerful that they threatened to overwhelm her mind, fear mind numbing and blinding fear. Accompanying it was blinding panic, rage and pain, it washed over her in waves from all directions, and they were so strong that she felt like she was going to drown in them. Something big and really bad was happening all around her and she couldn’t find out what it was.  
She heard a couple of massive boom noises that shook the whole place, making her stumble and fall on her face, it made dust from the ceiling of her cage drop on her from above. From Tyler’s memories, she recognised those noises to be explosions, then smaller much more rapid explosions were sounding all around her gage from the corridors and halls around her. she recognised these to be gunfire from the human weapons that she’d also seen in the darker places of Tyler’s mind, then the screams came, blood curdling and high pitched. Some were made from raw fear, others from immense pain, she could also hear some pretty horrible gurgling noises from rather close by.  
Her heart began to race as she tried desperately to find out what was going on outside, but all she could get was a mass of jumbled emotions, mainly fear and panic. Then some of those gunshots sounded rather close to the entrance to her cage and there was a series of beeps from the far side. Turning in the darkness she looked towards the sound of the noises and prepared herself, the humans had never been stupid enough to come into her cage while she was conscious before. They had always used that gas of theirs that stuck to her skin and made her sleep no matter how hard she fought it, but now if they were panicking then they were probably not thinking straight, this might be her chance to escape this nightmare.  
So she readied herself to strike at whoever stepped into her cage, swiftly she climbed the wall and got ready on the ceiling above the heavy metal door that separated her from her freedom with metal that not even her potent blood could eat through, oh how she’d tried. Suddenly the door flew up into its recess with a whoosh and a heavy figure stepped into the room holding a light of some kind, before he could swing it around she pounced down using her large frame to slam the figure to the floor with a heavy thud. Instantly she opened her jaws to take a bite out of the witless human, but just before she did she saw a set of eyes through the helmet visor that he was wearing that stopped her in her tracks, it was Tyler.  
Quick as a flash she jumped off him absolutely mortified at herself for attacking the one human who had been kind to her, she was just so relieved that she’d stopped her final attack before it punched a hole straight through his helmet and his head. As she jumped off him she could hear him breathe a sigh of relief before sitting up, instantly she moved forwards and actually helped him up from the floor, “Thanks big girl, good to know that my trust in you wasn’t misplaced. Thanks for not making me your next meal, though it probably would have been quicker than what I got coming.” He said in a pain racked voice as he stroked the side of her head, she thrummed softly at his wonderful touch. A strange smell flooded her nostrils and she instantly recognised it, it was blood, human blood.  
Looking quickly down she noticed that he seemed to be holding his left side with his hand, quickly she reached down and pulled his hand away, causing him to hiss in pain as she did. The wound that showed itself through the fabric jump suit looked to her like something had taken quite sizeable chunk out of his side, it kinda of looked like a bite to her but she didn’t recognise the teeth pattern. It looked intensely painful and she instantly began to worry about her favourite human, he seemed to notice her concern and stroked her head again with his other hand, “Don’t worry about me big girl we got far bigger problems. I told those fucking fools not to mess around with that fucking thing, that it was far more dangerous than anything we’d ever seen before, but would they listen? No, all they care about was they’re fucking weapon, well it’s come back to bite those fuckers now and possibly everyone else as well.” He said in a voice filled with venom, she looked at him curiously, not understanding what he meant. He seemed to sense it, because he stroked her face this time, “Don’t mind me big girl I’m just pissed that my kind can be so fucking arrogant and stupid enough to think we could actually control something like that. But enough about that, this place is totally fucked, we gotta get you outta here. I’ve already sprung your sisters by remote on my way over here and their making their way out, but I couldn’t get your door open for some reason it’s off the main system so I came down here to get you.” Tyler said, she instantly felt touched that he’d come all this way just to save her through all of the dangers that were causing such fear out there. Then, without warning, he dropped to his knees and started coughing violently. Instantly she was at his side trying to pick him up, but he pushed her away, “You have to get out of here big girl, this is it for me. This shit has me beat and I can feel it burning through me like a fire, you have to get out of here. Now go. Go on, GO!!!” he yelled at the last part, but she was determined, she would not leave him here to die.   
“No! I won’t let you die here.” she said in her mind, suddenly he looked at her, his face ashen white and huge black rings around his beautiful eyes. But more than that he had a look of real shock on his face,   
“You-You-You just spoke!!” he exclaimed in a seriously shocked voice. Now it was her turn to look shocked,   
“You heard that!?” she exclaimed looking right at him, he nodded before another coughing fit claimed him,   
“All this time, all this time and you could speak. Why did you never say anything?” he asked as he fought for breath,   
“Because I didn’t know that you could hear me. I’m not speaking using your people’s methods, I’m using mine.” she said telepathically, he looked at her and smiled,   
“Well at least I got to hear you before I go.” he said, a sudden panic rose in her. She stepped forwards to pick him up but he swatted her hands away,   
“No, if you take me along with you you’ll be in danger! You need to leave me! Go on, get out of here and get the freedom that you should have had!” he said desperately,   
“No Tyler, I won’t leave you! You were the only one who was nice to me, you were the one who taught me what kindness is, and I will not leave you die! I am going to return you to your mate and your hatchling, I owe you that much for all the nice things you showed me in your mind!” she said frantically, he coughed and looked confused… before a smile broke out of his face, his lips had turned deathly blue now.   
“So it was you in my head… I was never sure, but I had hoped that it was. I hoped that by letting you in, you’d at least get to see the outside world through my eyes if you could.” He said in a raspy voice, she smiled softly retracting her mandibles and her outer lips for him to see her smile.   
“You showed me such beautiful things.” She said and he smiled,   
“That’s because a beautiful creature… like you deserves to live in… beauty.” This hit her like one of those machines they used to test the strength of her hide by punching it,  
“You think I’m beautiful?” she almost stammered as she cradled his head, he smiled up at her,   
“God yes… you’re magnificent.” He said, then he coughed again and drew a deep breath.  
“I’m glad… at least my actions could bring you… some peace in here. And show you that… we’re not all bad as a… species.” he said then the coughing returned in massive fits before his breathing became extremely laboured.   
“Looks…. like…. this…I s…. it….. for…… me…… goodbye…… big….. girl…… live…….. free….. good….. luck.” He said with raspy breaths before his chest sagged and he breathed no more, in a blind panic she shook his lifeless body.   
“Tyler!!” She yelled in panic, “No! you can’t die! I need you!!!” she yelled desperately, shaking his lifeless body, then it hit her… She could no longer feel his mind, there was just nothingness.  
“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! TYLERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!” She roared at the top of her lungs as her anguish hit her, she hugged the limp human’s body to her own, cradling him against her chest. She sobbed into his shoulder, rubbing the side of his face with hers and using her mandibles to stroke every inch of his face, then suddenly he moved.  
Instantly setting him down and looking at him desperately with hope, but when his eyes snapped open there was something very wrong, “Tyler?” she asked hopefully, but she couldn’t feel his mind. All of a sudden, Tyler sat up and looked right at her, his eyes were filled with pulsing veins which led to totally white pupils.   
“Tyler what’s wrong?” she asked cautiously, about to move towards him. But before she could, Tyler, or rather the creature that used to be Tyler, lunged at her with inhuman speed and strength. It grabbed hold of her arm and tried to sink its teeth into her hide, if her reflexes hadn’t been as fast as they were then she would have been bitten, but instead she was able to throw him off,   
“Tyler stop it your scaring me!!” she exclaimed, but again she couldn’t feel his mind it was like there was a void wearing Tyler’s skin. The Tyler creature clambered awkwardly back to its feet, it lunged at her again from across the small cage. She realised now that he smelled vastly different, it was like his scent… but it was sour like urine. A low growl emitted from his throat,   
“Tyler?” she asked questioningly, but rather than answer the creature lunged her again and tried to catch hold of her tail, its jaws wide open to bite her. Out of reflex she stuck out with her tail, the mighty spear tip pierced straight through one of its white eyes and punched right out the back of his head. The Tyler creature instantly stopped moving and fell limp, now only suspended by her tail, she retracted it and caused the body to fall to the floor in a heap and a pool of black blood.  
“Oh no! Tyler I’m so so sorry!!” she said, rushing to the fallen human’s side once again, as she lowered herself she could smell that foul smell again. It seemed to be coming from his blood, whatever he’d become… This was not her Tyler. Something had done this to her beautiful human, it had made him a mockery of what he was and what he’d stood for. It had turned the most beautiful member of their species into a crazed animal that attacked on sight. Again she roared, not in pan or anguish, but in true and primal rage. She was going to find the creature that had ripped her Tyler away from her, and she was going to tear it’s throat out. She quickly looked at the now open door, her beautiful Tyler’s last gift to her, freedom. With one last saddened look at the fallen male, she turned and accepted his gift.


	3. Unchained

Chapter 3: Unchained  
The hallways outside of her cell were narrow and low for a creature of her size, which hampered her progress, but determination drove her on. She only had two goals in mind now. First was to find the creature or person that had ripped her beautiful Tyler away from her, and second was to make his sacrifice and gift count. She was going to be free.  
As she moved through the seemingly never-ending corridors, the irritating sounds of alarms and klaxons echoed all around her, dulling her senses. As she shook her head to clear it, she began to wonder where all the humans had gone, but before she had time to ponder this, the sound of rapidly approaching feet snapped her back to her senses. There was nowhere for her to hide, so she would have to face whatever it was head-on. So, turning her large body, she took up a battle stance, with her tail primed over her shoulder, ready to strike. Around the corner, to her left, a small group of humans dressed all in white coats appeared, but they were so distracted with what was behind them, that not a single one of them realised what they were running towards.   
“Come on, Malcom! Fucking run, they’re going to catch up!” the male at the front of the group shouted, seemingly to a male behind the small group that seemed to be lagging.   
“I-can’t-run-anymore” the male called Malcom said with a heavy pant. There were three females and four males in the group, and as they got closer, she recognised the minds as she probed them and a smile crossed her large face. These humans were part of the group that had run all those vile tests on her. Now, while inflicting pain on others for no reason was not in her nature, the pain and humiliation she had endured at their hands could not be forgiven. They wouldn’t have to worry about whatever they were running from much longer. Soon, they were going to have to worry about her.  
She let out a huge ear splitting screech of rage which caused the running group of humans to screech to such a sudden stop that they piled over one another into a massive pile, “Holy fucking shit!!! The one of the fucking queens is loose!!” the male who had been leading the group yelled as he tried to climb to his feet, she instantly recognised his mind, he was the human Alpha. He was the one that had been present at every single pain and humiliation that she had suffered at their hands, on top of that, he was most definitely in the group that had enjoyed seeing her pain. Now she was going to enjoy seeing his, before he could get up she charged forwards down the corridor, having to resort to bounding on all fours to gain enough speed to reach them before they could make their escape. “Fucking R……” he started to say before she stabbed straight through his abdomen with her long tail and lifted him into the air, she brought him round so that he was face to face with her.   
“For what you have done to me you deserve to die a slow agonising death human, but you should be thankful that I am not that vindictive.” She said using telepathy, his eyes went wide as fear flooded his mind, she knew that he could not understand her up until now, there had only been one who could, but before he had time to even attempt to beg for his life she opened her mandibles and shot her inner jaws forwards with such force that they pierced his head and fired straight out the other side.   
The other humans instantly began to full on panic and began to run back the way they came, but it appeared that whatever had been chasing them had caught up as they ran smack straight into another group of humans running the other way. But these ones only looked like humans in appearance, instantly she saw that these were the same creatures that her Tyler had become after his death.  
The creatures did not even hesitate in pouncing on the white coated humans, tearing into them with their teeth. She saw them biting arms, legs, throats or whatever they could grab hold of, in the first two seconds all but one of the white coated humans had been bitten and were rapidly being torn to pieces by the crazed animal humans. Now there was only one left who remained unbitten, it was a young black skinned female, suddenly in a flash of remembrance she realised that she knew this human, hers was one of the minds that had felt sympathy and sorrow for her and her situation, she was one of the different.  
As quick as a flash, she stepped forward and grabbed the fear frozen human female and lifted her off her feet, the human female screamed, “Please don’t kill me!!” She begged, looking at her face as she turned her to face her, rather than waste time trying to communicate with the human she simply threw her over her shoulder and dropped to her four limbs quickly. Which in such a narrow space is quite a feat when you’re 10ft tall, then as the crazed animal-like humans all turned towards her as one and began to give chase she sprinted down the corridor at top speed away from them.  
The human female on her shoulder shrieked at the top of her lungs the entire way down the corridor, it was so loud it was beginning to give her a headache. For some reason the human just couldn’t seem to grasp that she was trying to save her and didn’t mean her any harm, her constant shrieking was drawing more of the crazed animal-like humans to them like a magnet. Just when she had been wondering where all the humans had gone, it now seemed like every turn she tried to take was full of them, and not the normal ones.  
Rounding a sharp left turn she was grateful to finally find a route through this maze that wasn’t full of either shredded bodies or animal-humans, but her joy was short lived as she ran smack into a dead end. As she turned around to go back she heard the noise of swiftly approaching running feet, she quickly removed the shrieking human from her shoulder and placed her down on her feet in front of her before moving to put herself between their oncoming attackers and female. Finally, as she took up a battle stance the human female finally seemed to stop screaming, glancing back she could see the human looking at her with a puzzled expression, maybe the female was finally beginning to understand that she meant her no harm. So she decided to try something that had always made Tyler happy, she smiled at her.   
Suddenly, without a word, the human threw herself at a large silver door to her left and began frantically jabbing at small silver object on the wall while chanting “Come on!! Come on!!” Over and over again, her eyes never left the queen, then the large metal door made a ping noise but didn’t move an inch.   
“Dammit!!” the human female yelled pounding her fist on the door, the image of her pounding the door with her hand gave the queen an idea. She remembered something from walking in Tyler’s memories, he used to love watching these old things humans call movies especially the ones involving humans that dressed up in metal armour and carried these big metal pieces they called shields. She quickly moved in front of the door and slammed her large tail into it with some serious force, to her delight she was able to pierce right through it and with some strength was able to tear it from its frame.  
It wasn’t a moment too soon, because the first of the crazed humans rounded the corner and headed right for them, the female human looked past the queen and her new door shield then at the running humans and screamed once more. Turning quickly the queen brought her door shield up in front of her and prepared to meet the charging animal-humans head on. Then the human female had an even better idea, behind the door she’d torn free was some sort of vertical shaft with a metal rope running down it, the female human jumped into the shaft and began to try and climb the rope away from their attackers. The queen gave herself a mental slap for having not thought of this first, but she’d been so caught up in the memory/fantasy that she’d had many times of Tyler bursting into her cell dressed in metal ready to carry her out of there like one of the princesses in his favourite movies that it had not even occurred to her to climb.  
In a flash she spun on the spot and sent the door shield that was currently still impaled on her tail spinning down the corridor like a propeller blade, she threw it with such force that it acted like one too. It sliced the first three ranks of charging animal-humans in half before coming to a stop embedded in the wall of the bend. Using the precious seconds that this bought her, the queen squeezed herself into the narrow shaft and rapidly began to climb, unlike the human female just ahead of her, she didn’t need to use the metal rope as she was able to just jam her claws into the surfaces of the walls.  
She instantly reached the climbing human who tried to kick out at her, she still didn’t seem to grasp that she didn’t want to hurt her, but as it was, the kick more tickled than hurt. In fact it hurt her feelings more, but rather than take it personally she decided to be the better lifeform here and quickly flipped the desperate human off the rope.  
Before the human female had a chance to fall, she plucked her out of the air and put her on her back again, but this time directly on her back rather than over her shoulder. The young female had no choice but to hang onto her dorsal spines as the queen rapidly climbed the shaft, at least she didn’t scream all the way up.  
Below them, she heard the crazed screams of the animal-humans that had entered the shaft in an attempt to get them, but in their crazed state they seemed to have no memory of how to climb, because every single one of them fell screaming into the dark void of the shaft below them. The first few made a metallic and meaty sounding crash as they hit something metal further down the shaft, the ones after that sounded slightly muffled as they hit their fellows instead. The young human on her back looked down the shaft and then at the side of her head, “P-P-P-Please don’t drop me.” She stammered softly and the queen felt the female tighten her grip on her dorsal spines, she was just glad that she finally seemed to have grasped that she didn’t mean her any harm and only wanted to help.  
As she reached the top of the shaft, she found another of those metal doors blocking their path, so jamming her hands against the walls, she was able to swing her legs into a position where she was able to kick against the door. To her amazement, the door flew out of its frame and outwards away from her with only the first kick. This human technology was weaker than she had expected it to be, it was certainly weaker than the stuff they had used in her cage. Immediately, as the door flew outwards, she heard screaming again, but this time it wasn’t coming from her companion. Her heart sunk as this meant that the animal-humans had made it up here ahead of them. Slowly and cautiously, she emerged from the shaft and into the corridor that it led into. Once clear, she removed the young human female from her back and placed her down in front of her, but surprisingly she didn’t flee the second her feet touched the ground. Instead, she stood close to her, looking around them. Then, she looked up into her face. “I don’t know why you did it, but thank you for getting me out of there” she said, still sounding nervous.   
“You’re welcome” the queen said, but to her human ears it would have sounded more like a hiss. The human female visibly flinched at this, but at least she didn’t run or start screaming again. Suddenly, a very familiar sound but a very welcome one, or at least to her ears anyway, permeated the air. A loud screech, which was swiftly followed by a roar, echoed through the corridor that they were in. Immediately, the queen’s head snapped in the direction it had come from. “Sister!” the queen said aloud. Immediately, she charged off down the corridor, swiftly followed by the human female.  
This floor looked very different to the one that she had lived on, whereas the corridors down there had all been a dull dark grey colour, up here they were all vibrant colours, from whites to blues and reds, they also passed by lots of rooms that were walled off with panes of glass that allowed the occupant to see out and see who was outside, the rooms appeared to contain individual work stations for humans to work from, though right now not a single human occupied any of these work spaces.   
Pretty soon, the corridor opened into a large lobby. It was huge and white, made entirely out of what appeared to be white marble. There were lots of the little work stations dotted about and lots of potted plants, though why anyone would want to keep a plant in a pot was beyond the queen. She also noticed that there were lots of glass screens depicting happy humans holding a variety of objects. She didn’t know what they were, but for some reason she found herself that if they made these humans in the pictures so happy, then they’d probably make her happy too and she wondered how she could obtain these items. As she scanned over the room, it was then that she noticed the source of the angry screech that she’d heard earlier. Stood on the other side of the room, towering over a small crowd of huddled humans, was one of her sisters, and by her body language she could tell that she was royally angry. She had a sneaking suspicion that she should proceed with caution, so quickly she motioned that her human companion should stay here, out of sight for a moment while she handled the introductions. Well she seemed to get the stay here part anyway and she quickly hid behind one of the work stations.   
“Sister!” she called before heading in the other queen’s direction. The other queen turned towards the sound, and she regarded her approaching sister with curiosity. Suddenly, the approaching queen stopped as she saw what her sister was holding. “Sister, what are you going to do with that human?” she asked slowly. The other queen looked down at the terrified human in her hands and then she looked back at her sister.   
“I’m going to feed on it, why?” she asked. The approaching queen snarled loudly and angrily.   
“But it’s a hatchling, why would you do such a thing?!!” she roared. The other queen looked down at the small human female in her hands before again looking at her sister with visible confusion at her sister’s anger.  
“So? It’s one of their hatchlings, not one of ours” she said,   
“SO!? Fucking so!? It’s a hatchling!” the queen roared at the top of her lungs. Her sister again looked confused at her sister’s anger.   
“Why do you care what I do with one of their young!? It’s not as if it’s important. They locked us up and tortured us, dear sister. They’ve killed hundreds if not thousands of our hatchlings even before many had the chance to be born. I watched them wipe out my entire hive with my own eyes with their fire weapons, I had to watch as my eggs were burned to ash right before my very eyes, I can still hear their screams for mercy in my mind, but you wouldn’t know that would you? As you were born here, just another of their vile experiments on our kind. Their kind deserve to pay for what they’ve done, they deserve to watch as their hatchlings burn, but since I can’t produce fire like they can I can still make them watch as I eat it right in front of them.” she snarled looking at her shocked sister before looking back at the terrified human child in her hands.   
“You do realise that it’s one of their kind that you owe your freedom to, right? He got himself killed trying to rescue us from this place. They are not all the same sister, we can’t hold every one of them responsible for the vile evil crimes of but a few!” she roared. Her sister snorted.   
“I doubt you’d feel the same if it was your hive that was burned to ash before your very eyes” she said. Then, she slowly opened her outer mouth as she lined up the human child’s head with her inner jaws, but, before she could take a bite, she was hit from behind with immense strength, sending her flying and making her drop the hatchling.  
She couldn’t believe that one of her kind would sink so low as to harm a hatchling, but with utter horror she watched as her sister levelled the child’s head with her jaws ready to take a bite and she knew that she had to act, so without giving her a warning she charged her full force and used her large head as battering ram, she slammed right into her sister’s back sending her flying across the room, she slammed face first into one of the marble pillars demolishing it in a cloud of dust, fortunately she dropped the hatchling before he little impromptu flying lesson, now she placed herself between her angry sister and the humans as she emerged from the rubble, “You would dare side with the filthy humans over one of your own!? I fucking knew it, filthy hybrid!! You are not one of us and you never will be!!” her sister roared,   
“I am as much xeno as you are! But, if my one of my ‘kind’ would stoop so low as to deliberately kill a hatchling out of something as petty as vengeance, then maybe I’m better off with the humans!” she spat in return. Her sister roared and charged, but before she could complete her charge, a door on the fore side of the room burst open and a large group of heavily armed humans entered the room. Both queens stopped and looked at them.  
“The queens are loose! Terminate them!” one of the armoured humans shouted, while the others took up firing positions. Suddenly, it was like the air was filled with angry stinging insects. She felt the first few hit along her right side. None of them made it through her thick hide, but they stung like hell. She knew that it was pointless trying to explain to the humans that she was on their side, so she turned and headed for the large glass panels that made up the outer wall of the large lobby and charged them at full tilt. Her sister apparently had other ideas as she charged straight into the armoured humans, screeching as she went. The unarmed humans that had been huddled in the group that her sister had been planning on killing had now been joined by the human she had brought with her, and she’d had the same idea as her, so, as she smashed through the glass and burst out into a world of sunlight, they followed her out to safety from her sisters rage.  
The outside was as beautiful as she’d seen in Tyler’s mind. The sunlight was blinding temporarily, and she had to shield her eyes from the brightness as she stood, staring in awe at the beauty all around her. The group of humans charged past her, and headed towards the large gates at the end of the courtyard they’d emerged into. Before she joined them, the young woman she had saved shouted a final thank you to her before she headed off with her own kind. The queen felt happy that her actions had managed to not only save a beautiful life, but to create some form of understanding between their species, but as it turned out, she didn’t have time to contemplate what this meant as there was a tremendous roar of a blast behind them, and as she turned to look she saw a whole crowd of what appeared to be the animal-humans charging out of a door and immediately attacking everything they saw, including her sister. In the confusion, she saw one of them manage to grab hold of her sister’s leg before taking a massive bite out of it. She found herself amazed that the humans teeth had managed to penetrate her hide when their projectiles could not. Her sister roared in pain and went to tear the human’s head off, but before she could, his entire head dissolved from contact with her blood. Then she finally seemed to decide that freedom was more important to her than killing all the armoured humans and she charged out through another panel of glass into the same courtyard as her. She looked at her sister as she charged towards the wall separating the compound from whatever lay beyond, and scaled it effortlessly, but before she disappeared she had time to throw one last insult her way. “May all your hatchlings be still born, dear sister” she said, before disappearing over the wall. The queen snarled at her sister’s vileness. She was pissed that she had to share a species with someone like that, but then the charging armoured humans decided that, since they’d lost their original target that she’d do as a replacement, and she was forced to follow her sister over the wall as human projectiles stung her all over her body.  
The human hive beyond the wall was absolutely massive, and so beautiful. It was so full of vibrant life of every imaginable sort that she found herself stopping from time to time as she made her way to freedom just to admire it. She had been doing her best to stay out of sight of the many humans on the streets and roads below her as she made her way along roof tops and from tower to tower. She also had to admire the human architecture in that they could create such amazing, sturdy homes for themselves to live in. They had everything from huge spiralling towers that housed thousands of individuals, to little cosy dwellings that house only a single family unit. It was one of these dwellings that her Tyler had lived in with his mate and his hatchling. The thought of his hatchling growing up without her father there to raise her made her sad beyond words. She was tempted to try and find Tyler’s mate and to try and explain what had happened to her beloved, but she decided against it, as it would probably also involve having to reveal her own feelings towards him, and she really didn’t think that having to deal with jealousy was going to help with the healing process of losing her loved one.  
From high on her perch on one of the towers, she opened her mind and allowed it to touch those of the millions below her. All the thoughts and feelings that drifted up to her filled her with such joy and happiness that, for a moment, she was able to forget that she was obviously being hunted by the humans. Now she knew that this was only the ones that had held her and her sisters, and they were such a small group when compared to this absolutely beautiful spectacle, but she still decided that, as much as it pained her, the best course of action was probably to get as far away from the humans as she could. Maybe one day she would be able to return to this beautiful place, and to be able to walk among and interact with its inhabitants without fear, and this thought filled her with hope. Tyler had taught her that not all humans were bad, and that they could be so much more than her sister had thought. She hoped a day would come when they could know a peace and understanding between their two kinds, but that day was not today.   
Fortunately, surrounding the human mega hive on all sides were thick and wild jungles, so with the speed and grace that only one of her kind would ever know, she made her way across the hive as fast as she could before disappearing into the lush deep green of the jungle. She just hoped that Tyler’s last gift had paid off for her other sisters as well, and that they had made it out.  
It took her a little time to find a place that she deemed would be safe from the human hunters, but would also allow her to keep tabs on the human mega hive. For some reason she felt a really strong connection with that place. Maybe because she was born there or maybe it was because Tyler had given her a connection with humans that she didn’t want to disregard, but with a bit of searching, she found a place that served her needs. It was a cliff that stood nearly as high as some of the human made towers. It had a waterfall so big that it was ringed with clouds, as some of the water evaporated before it was able to hit the ground. About halfway up was the entrance to a cave network, and she decided that this would be a perfect place to set up her own hive, so she started the slow process of transforming this place into her new home. It would take her a week or two to accomplish this, and she decided that once she had done this and she had a place to call her own, she would then begin the search for her other sisters.  
As it turned out, fate had other ideas. From her high perch above the mega hive, she could see things seemed to be going very wrong down there. Every day there seemed to be more and more columns of smoke rising from various points of the sprawling landscape, and noises of weapons, fire, and explosions drifted up to her on the breeze. Try as she might to ignore it, her curiosity stung her harder and harder each and every day that past. Eventually, she decided to go and investigate what was happening to the humans, so with curiosity guiding her, she left her new hive and set off for the human hive.  
What she found filled her with a terror the likes of which she had never imagined possible. She had decided to approach at night to help conceal her presence from the humans, but the closer she got, it disturbed her just how quiet it was here. She couldn’t hear or feel just about anyone, and what she could feel was nothing but sheer terror or mind crippling pain and anguish. What had happened here? Where were all the beautiful humans that she had felt when she had left? Silently, she made her way onto the roof of what looked like a storage for those weird moving machines that the humans seemed to buzz around their hive in. On the breeze, she could hear various noises, but most of them either seemed to be screams of fear or pain intermixed with crazed roars. She decided she need to investigate further and she moved deeper into the hive.  
It disturbed her that she hadn’t seen a single human since she’d entered this place, and there was something unsettling in the air. It was the over powering smell of death. It seemed to be everywhere and on every surface, like the whole once beautiful place was now tainted with it. Suddenly, a noise below her drew her attention, and she leaned over the side of the roof she was on to investigate. Through the lights that lit the main channel of this part of the hive, she saw a small running figure. It appeared to be being chased by a huge crowd of humans. It didn’t take her long to realise that these were the animal-human she had seen in that place that Tyler had rescued her from, and the second realisation hit her like the punching machine, the running figure was a hatchling!  
Without a second thought, the queen dove over the side of the building she was atop of and slammed hard into the ground below her, cracking the material with the force. “This way child, hurry!” she yelled, but the hatchling, rather than turning to run towards her did the exact opposite, turning away from her and running down yet another channel, “No, not that way!!” the queen yelled, as she saw the hatchling run into a channel that would lead it straight into the path of yet another group of animal-humans. She suddenly knew that she was going to have to intercede directly here, and straight away, she set off at a blistering pace in pursuit of the hatchling.


	4. Into the Breach

Chapter 4: Into the Breach.  
“Oh do me a favour and quit whining about it, it’s not like you haven’t done this a hundred times already” Meesa said as the team walked from the armoury and towards the launch bay,  
“Yeah but come on Moodstone it makes me sick to my stomach, the last thing I need going into a shit storm is feeling like I’m gonna hurl the entire time!” Spike said in a whining voice,  
“Ye could always get Inferno to punch you in ya stomach laddie” Tank said as he walked over and put his big arm around Meesa who smiled up at him under her helmet,   
“What good would that do?” Spike asked in a rather high pitched voice,  
“Because then you’d have already been sick, so you won’t have to worry about having anything in there to chuck up all over your console” Reaper said from his left,   
“Dude you’re supposed to be on my side!” Spike snorted looking at his friend, Aiden grinned under his mask, suddenly T’shara appeared by their right,  
“What are you all discussing?” she asked, Reaper, Moodstone and Tank all looked at each other and grinned before turning the group smile to her,   
“Whether you should punch Spike in the stomach” they all said in unison, much to Spike’s disappointment rather than dismiss the idea as foolishness she seemed to actually be considering it, he knew thoughtful mandible clicks when he heard them,   
“Oh so wait, you won’t risk arm wrestling Reaper before a mission because and I quote, ‘You do not wish to risk injuring a valuable team member before a mission’ but punching me in the stomach is fine?” he said trying to do a mock version of T’shara’s gruff voice while doing her part, she shot him an angry glance but then her expression softened,  
“Exactly, I do not wish to injure a valuable team mate” she said putting real emphasis on the valuable part, this was instantly met by sniggers from Meesa, Aiden and even Gregor,   
“Oh great now I know this mission’s fucked” Spike said, Meesa cocked her head curiously to one side as she looked at him while still giggling,  
“What makes you say that Spike?” she asked between giggles,  
“Well I’m pretty sure that’s one of the signs of the coming of the four horsemen of the apocalypse isn’t it?” he asked,  
“What are you gibbering about laddie?” Tank asked,   
“You know the four horsemen who signal the coming of the apocalypse, Conquest, War, Famine and Death, well I’m pretty sure that Inferno finally cracking a joke is the final sign, the coming of the horseman of Death is upon us!!” Spike said launching into a full on dramatic recital, instantly Inferno aimed a swat at his head which missed and Spike set off down the hallway faster with her in pursuit to the sounds of the other three giggling even harder behind them.  
Doug and Whisper who already in the launch bay were not even the least bit surprised to see Spike come flying through the door at top speed with Inferno in hot pursuit, it had become a bit of a standing joke among the team that the pair of them were responsible for the other being so physically fit what with all the running they both did, at least when she caught him she always managed to keep her instincts to harm him in check, she usually settled for just scaring him, though there was that time Spike had put a plastic spider on her while she was asleep and as funny as it was to see a big rough tough hyper powerful Yaujta huntress scream like a little girl when she woke up to what she thought was a spider on her face, it had taken all of Reaper’s heavily augmented strength to hold her pinned down to the deck plate to stop her from literally murdering him and taking his skull as a trophy, though pretty much all of the team had agreed that she she’d secretly liked the being pinned down by reaper in his underwear part.  
The team now assembled in the Ghost’s Shadow’s launch bay and began running their launch checks, they were going to be dropping into the combat zone in things that they called the Devil’s door knockers, these were effectively heavily modified drop pods, in fact they moved so fast and were so agile that they were more like missiles than pods and that was the intention, when the Spirit teams were first formed they had used regular drop pods and this had resulted in a high mortality rate among operators, as the pods were either shot out of the sky by advanced air defences or if they weren’t destroyed by the hits they obliterated on impact with the ground due to structural damage suffered by either weapons fire or warping of the metals on entry.  
So the best engineers in the Spirits had gotten together and had totally redesigned the whole concept, the results were the pods that were now sat in their launch tubes, the XM-507’s or Devil’s door knockers. They were fifteen feet tall and shaped rather like a large black dart, no weapons but extremely thick Tritanium armour which could take more than a few hits from both Yaujta plasma cannons or even the best anti air missiles that money could buy, the boosters on top of the pods accelerated them to nearly impossible to hit speeds while the side thrusters kept them dancing around to avoid anything heading their way, all in all it made for a hell of a ride.  
All of the team stowed all of their weapons in their pod’s stowage bins, the only ones they kept on them were their side arms, this was because the cabins were so small that there was simply no room for them inside the pod, after that they went through their anti-shaving foam bomb checks, they had all fallen foul of this particular prank of Spike’s more than once and he had gotten rather ingenious at hiding the damn things, apparently he found it hilarious when they emerged from their pod ready to go into combat covered from head to foot in a thick layer of shaving foam.  
Finally, with their pre-flight and anti-shaving foam bombs check complete the team loaded themselves into the incredibly cramped pods, but while incredibly cramped each of the team knew that these things were designed to be like that, the armour around the passenger cab was exceptionally dense to protect the passenger and the tightness was to hold you in place so that you weren’t thrown all over the place during either manoeuvres or impact.  
Aiden strapped himself in to the pod and closed the hatch in front of him after he was done, next up was to turn the pod’s systems and communications on and sync them up to the Ghost’s Shadow, this involved pressing a few buttons around the cab until the whole panel lit up like a Christmas tree, after this was done he activated the comms, “Alright Spirits game face’s on it go time, sound off” he said in his best Sergeant’s voice, one by one the voices came through the speakers in both his helmet and the pod,   
“Spike ready”  
“Moonstone ready”  
“Tank ready laddie”  
“Inferno ready to hunt”  
“Picasso ready”  
“Whisper ready”  
“Ice ready”  
“And Reaper ready, Queen bee Spirit team six is ready for the go” Aiden said,   
“Alright Spirits comms are good and your vitals are coming through loud and clear, I’ve synced the pod’s drop system to automatic and set the coordinates for the drops to each of your navi comps, not gonna lie to you this is going to be a hell of a drop with all the flak coming your way, we’re going to aim for the outskirts of the city where the flak will be at its lightest, so your gonna have to hoof it from there or secure vehicles and move to the centre, so god speed and good luck Spirits lets show them why we’re the best at this” Captain Carter’s voice said through the intercom,   
“Roger that” each of them said in perfect unison.  
As she finished speaking Aiden’s holographic navi comp lit up showing the planet, it showed a route to the outskirts of the mega city of New London, suddenly a decreasing number came up at the bottom, it started at ten and was rapidly counting down, as it hit one he spoke through the intercom, “Here we fucking go!!” he yelled and with a massive rush his pod accelerated through the drop tube out of the bottom of the Ghost’s Shadow. After a couple of rolls the pod orientated itself and accelerated to its maximum velocity in the direction of the planet, it always amazed Aiden the sheer quiet of space, apart from his breathing in his helmet and the soft beeps of his controls there was just sheer nothingness all around him, he couldn’t even hear the engines of his own pod let alone the others, above him he could see the other pods through the glass, they were loosely clustered for the moment but he knew as soon as the flak started they would break off and head to different drop zones to maximise the problems the anti-air systems would have tracking them, “Alright Spirts brace for atmosphere breach” Aiden said into his intercom as he was watching his distance counter counting down in his Hud,   
“Ahhh fuck I hate this part!!” Spike’s voice said through the intercom, as he said it the whole pod began to shake and bounce, a corona of flame lit up the outside of the pod’s super reinforced carbon glass as his pod breached the atmosphere, suddenly the alarms started going off and the words ‘Incoming anti-air detected beginning evasive manoeuvres’ appeared in his Hud, “Everyone hang on shit is heading towards the fan” he said into his intercom,   
“Oh shit that means we’re the fan right!?” Spike’s voice replied sounding panicked,   
“Hang on to ye ball sack laddie! This is where the fun begins!!” Tank’s voice said through the intercom,  
“Not helping!!” Spike yelled as their pods broke formation and began their evasive manoeuvres, the G forces from the turns that these pods were capable of were pretty extreme, to Aiden it felt like his blood was being forced from his head to his feet then back again and then back again, then the pod started doing barrel rolls trying to shake off the three missiles that were chasing him, all the while he kept seeing ground, sky, ground, sky, ground, sky through his window, on his next drop he swore to himself that he was gonna get a set of fucking curtains for the pod, but the worst part of this ride was the fact that it was completely computer controlled, you had no input other than to hang the fuck onto the harness and hope your computer was smarter than the computer of missiles that were chasing you.  
“Whooooo yeah!!! Come on ye little bastards can’t fucking touch this!!!” Tank yelled, Aiden caught a glimpse of his pod directly below him as it went through a set of tight turns heading directly for a massive circular shaped white tower building, plasma bolts sizzled the air all around him as his pod effortlessly dodged them all, it smashed straight through the top floor of the tower and disappeared from sight then he came over the intercom again, “Tank on the ground and deploying” he said, suddenly another voice came through the intercom,   
“Whisper on the ground and deploying” she said, then there was another,  
“Picasso on the ground and deploying” his voice said, then another came in,  
“Inferno on the ground and ready to hunt” she said, that meant half of the team was on the ground and were gearing up and getting ready to go, but that meant that now there were only four targets in the air for the anti-air to go after.  
As his pod went through another tight near ninety degree turn he saw another pod in the distance spinning through multiple barrel rolls to avoid incoming plasma fire before it smashed through the side of a rather large square shaped building, “Ice on the ground and deploying” her voice said through the intercom, three left in the air now, as he looked down he saw a pod bouncing down a main road directly below him before slamming into a wall near enough collapsing it on top of the pod, he wasn’t worried the pods were equipped with tools for this eventuality, things like hydraulic rams to lift debris off the pod’s cabin.  
“Moodstone on the ground and deploying” her voice said through the intercom, suddenly plasma sizzled past the window of Aiden’s pod only inches away from the glass, now that there were less targets to aim for the anti-air was becoming far more intense, suddenly his pod jolted massively to the left as there was a massive bang from behind him somewhere, alarms immediately stared going off in the cabin, on his holo display a picture of his pod appeared with three of the pod’s four engines now highlighted in red, he was currently only running on one thruster, there was no way that he’d be able to avoid any more incoming with only one engine and his directional thrusters as they’d never be able to pull him out of the turns on their own, “Fuck I’m hit, I repeat Reaper is hit, I’ve lost three engines and I’m going down!” Aiden yelled into his intercom as his pod initiated emergency decent which basically meant it adjusted into a forty-five-degree drop, over his intercom just as he said it he heard “Spike on the ground and sick as a fucking dog, but I’ve got eye’s on Reaper’s pod, he’d about five clicks due north of me and he’s going in hard!!” Spike’s voice said, just then there was a tremendous crash and Aiden was thrown around inside his pod, due to his engines being out there was next to nothing to try and stop the pod’s sliding velocity so the building he smashed into he shot straight through and out the other side, he felt the pod’s angle switch and he knew it was now falling vertically straight down, before she could even think to try and relay any information to his team the pod slammed hard into the ground with such force that it punched through the road that it hit, Aiden was jostled about so badly inside the pod that even through his helmet his head was slammed into the rear of the cab that it knocked him clean out.  
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From where she was on the top floor of some apartment block super high rise she’d had a good view out over the city, she watched as each of her team mates pods landed before they called in, well landed was a loose term, more like slammed into a building or the ground but at least they were on the ground safely.   
With only two left in the air she found herself making a silent prayer to Paya as she watched the two pods dancing and twisting to avoid the anti-air flak, then she saw Spike’s pod ground itself in a building about eight clicks from her position, now that only left Aiden in the air and she felt her heart begin to pound harder, she didn’t know what it was about this particular human but there was something powerful that softened her defences around him, despite being one of the most powerful and skilled operators that she had ever known of any species there was a real gentleness to him, he was such a kind and caring male that the contrast in his personality often shocked her, in battle he was fearless and had often been described by both enemies and friends alike as a force of nature and that was if you saw him coming, given that he is an assassination specialist that was not often the case as most of his targets never got the privilege of ever looking him in the eye as they never even knew he was there.   
But to her he had always been kind and even gentle, he always made a point of trying to include her in conversations and always tried to get her to give her opinion on any matter that they were discussing, T’shara remembered when she had first joined Spirit team six, she had not trusted anyone and had been very stand offish with the entire team, but it was Aiden that had walked up to her bold as brass and had introduced himself, something in his bright intelligent eyes had told her right from that moment that she could trust this human with her life and he had never let her down and the more missions they did and the more times they fought side by side only served to strengthen that already unbreakable bond, she also found herself marvelling often at his amazing inner strength a point that often hit home when she remembered how he’d gotten his cybernetics, she’d seen this male go through more pain than any four other people she knew combined and somehow come out the other side still smiling that goofy smile of his, the one that always seemed to make her heart melt in her chest when she saw it.  
Then as she watched she saw a missile strike the engines of Aiden’s pod with a huge ball of flames before she saw his pod screaming through the sky trailing a huge black tail behind it, her heart now felt like it was trying to escape from her chest as she tracked it across the sky till she lost sight of it behind the buildings, suddenly she heard Spike’s radio call relaying Aiden’s last known position to the team, immediately she powered up her dual plasma casters and turned to find the exit, fuck the mission for the moment, she was going to get her friend back.  
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The first thing Aiden heard as he started to come to was the ringing of the alarms in his pod, the loud beeping noises pierced his head like a thousand knives all stabbing him in the brain, as his eyes slowly opened they tried to focus on the inside of his pod but apart from a few glowing red lights here and there it was completely dark, instantly his night vision kicked in and the world went black and white, “Uggghhh fuck, well that could have gone smoother” he said groaning as he moved his head and it felt like a load of spiky marbles rolling around in his skull, he reached for the pod’s comms button to his right and pressed it, “Reaper on the ground alive and deploying” he said, but instead of replies he got an earful of screeching static, “Great the comms are fucked” he said jabbing the button again to get the same result.  
Reaching down to his left he located a large twist handle and he cranked it around to the left, he heard the motor that lifts the canopy up start to grind as it tried to lift the canopy away from him, suddenly another red light lit up on the holo display of the pod highlighting the canopy release motor, “Fucking figures” Aiden said as he listened to the motor grinding away as it tried in vain to lift it, twisting the handle through another ninety degrees he yanked it upwards and deployed the emergency explosive bolts which blew the canopy up and away from the pod with a dull thud, then he released the clasps of the harness that held him in place and he slowly sat up.  
The first thing he noticed was the sound of running water all around him, turning to look around he realised that his pod had fallen into a massive tunnel of some kind, it took him a couple of seconds to realise that he’d fallen through the road and into the sewer system, he laughed to himself quietly as he shook his head, “Well if there was ever a perfect metaphor for how my day is going then this is it, get shot down and now have to wade knee deep through shit, perfect” he said as released the remaining harness clasps and climbed out of the pod on to the outer hull.  
It was at this point that Aiden noticed the spider web of cracks running through his helmet’s visor, slowly he removed it from his head and turned it over in his armoured hands, there was a huge dent in the right side and his visor was cracked all over, “Well that explains the fucking headache” he said looking at his damaged helmet, but he was rather glad of the helmet’s sacrifice as otherwise that have been his skull, throwing the helmet down to his side it bounced off the hull of the pod and splashed into the water that surrounded the pod, now he was able to get his first look at the extensive damage that his pod had suffered from the crash, to say it was fucked was the understatement of the century, not a single panel had escaped unscathed from the impact forces that it had suffered, the hull was twisted and buckled and it reminded Aiden of what happens when you twist the nose of a paper aeroplane into a dart, it was a testament to the engineers that had designed it that he’d survived pretty much unscathed from this.  
A sudden thought hit Aiden and he scrambled down off the pod and into the waist high foul smelling water, in fact he really didn’t want to think about what was floating around him right now, making his way around to the back of the pod he looked for the storage bay cover, fortunately the panel for the pod’s storage bay was above the water line, but unfortunately it was heavily damaged and he instantly knew that the release mechanisms were fried as the panel was heavily buckled in, he just prayed that the equipment inside had survived, grabbing the jagged edge of the panel with his cybernetic arm he strained a little against it but pretty soon the panel tore free in his hand.  
Underneath the outer panel the reinforced cage that protected his equipment seemed to be in pretty good shape and thankfully so did his gear, lifting out the magnetic bandoliers he began strapping things to the outside of his armour, the last thing to come out was his P.I.M.P rifle, or Plasma Infused Modular Projector rifle, PIMP for short, an anagram that tickled his team endlessly, but in reality the PIMP was no laughing matter, it was a highly advanced energy projectile weapon that was based on Yaujta plasma caster technology, it had a modular frame that was able to adjust itself to the users requirements, it had three primary settings, long barrel high calibre sniper rifle mode, medium barrel and medium calibre assault rifle and finally short barrel small calibre sub machine gun.  
The PIMP used energy cells to power it, they were shaped like normal gun magazines for speed of change and they simply slotted into a magazine chamber at the bottom of the gun, depending on what mode you had the weapon in changed how many charges the cell had, it had fifty in sniper mode, one hundred in assault rifle mode and two hundred in sub machine gun mode because of the calibre the gun had to generate and the power it had to put into each projectile.  
Aiden checked the weapon over and breathed easy when he discovered that it had survived unscathed, powering it up he quickly flicked it into sub machine gun mode because of tight confines of the sewer system that he was in, now he had his gear all he had to do was find a way out of this bloody shit filled sewer and hook up with his team, as he looked up at the ceiling where his pod had smashed through the top of the pipe there was a shaft of daylight beaming down from the hole right onto his pod, it was a good thirty feet up and with smooth sides of the pipe there was no way of climbing up, he was going to have to move further into the system and look for a surface access to get back up, just as he was getting ready to go a noise drifted up from deeper down the pipe, a rather familiar noise that sent shivers down Aiden’s spine, it was a screech.  
Aiden snapped his weapon up into the shoulder and scanned the tunnel ahead of him, he couldn’t see any movement but he knew that noise well and it could only mean one thing, Xenos.  
If there were Xeno’s here they may have just found the reason while New Britannia had gone dark, these creatures were renowned for taking out entire human colonies as well as those of other species as well, most humans hated them with an absolute passion, but not Aiden, he had to admit he admired them, they were utterly ruthless and efficient to a tee, most people considered them to be bugs working on highly evolved instinct, but from his various run-ins with these creatures he knew better, they were highly intelligent and adaptive, each and every member of their hives worked just like every special forces operator should, perfect whether as part of a team or as an individual, they were like the most perfect natural born soldiers that the universe could throw at you and if you didn’t respect them, you were a fucking fool.  
Aiden had only taken a single step forwards away from his pod when another screech echoed down the tunnel, this time from much closer than before, it was moving and towards him at that, Aiden’s eyes frantically scanned the dark tunnel, thanks to his night vision he could see perfectly in the gloom like he was in a black and white film, silently he cursed the loss of his helmet, one of the way’s that Xeno’s hunted was through pheromones, they could pick up even minute traces in the air, if his helmet had still been in one piece his armour would have been totally sealed, this would have made him a lot harder for the creature to detect, but with its loss and his adrenaline now pumping he must have been like a fucking shining beacon for it to home in on.   
Every third sweep of his rifle was over the ceiling above his head as he knew how much these things loved surprise attacks from above, suddenly Aiden heard splashes down the tunnel ahead of him, they were getting closer rather quickly, it was heading right for him, bracing himself Aiden traced his weapon left and right over the water line looking for a target, then he saw it and it was like nothing he had ever seen before.  
The Xeno appeared around the corner but it looked unsteady on its feet, it was swaying from left to right as it moved, that’s when it saw Aiden as he was training his weapon on it and it charged right at him with an ear splitting screech, as soon as he drew a bead Aiden fired, the small plasma projectiles hissed down the tunnel at insane speed creating small bubbles of light as the flew before they slammed into the Xeno’s outer hide sending acidic blood spraying around it, but unlike any Xeno he had encountered before this one didn’t even attempt to dodge the incoming fire it simply charged straight at him with reckless abandon screeching at the top of its lungs as it did.   
Aiden sent yet another volley it’s way and every round found its mark sending yet more acidic blood spraying around it, but they didn’t even slow it down as it charged at him, the thing had six holes drilled straight through its chest and part of its guts hanging out but it didn’t even appear to feel it, it just kept coming.  
Aiden took a step backwards from the charging creature and he adjusted his aim, this time rather than centre mass he aimed right for the creature’s face and he pulled the PIMP’s trigger again, because it was an energy weapon it had no recoil when it fired so it was able to send the three round burst down the exact same line, each and every one drilled a sizzling hole straight through its large dome shaped forehead and cause the back of its skull to explode showering the water around it with green acidic blood, the creature slammed face first into the water with the force of its charge and slid a few feet sending waves ahead of it as it slid.  
“Holy shit” Aiden breathed as he panted from the adrenaline coursing through his veins, slowly he approached the fizzing body of the Xeno being cautious not to step on any patches of its blood, as he looked at the body of the fallen Xeno straight away he could tell that there was something wrong with it, all over its body there appeared to be weird growths sticking up from its hide, usually these creatures were sleek and streamlined, but this one looked diseased, the strange growths were like some sort of coral stuck to the outside of its skin, that’s when he noticed that most of its face where the rounds had hit were covered in the things, “What the fuck?” he said as he examined the body, he was about to pull out his scanner and run a few tests when he heard another screech from behind him somewhere, this was swiftly followed by another and then another, he decided alien autopsies could wait, first thing he needed to do was get the fuck out of this sewer, so turning to the direction where the Xeno had come from he began to run.


	5. Friends In High Places.

Chapter 5: Friends in High Places.  
As she jumped from building to building she tried to keep her eyes on the hatchling that was running for its life between the buildings as it tried to evade the pursuing animal-humans. The growls and screeches that these creatures made were echoing off just about every surface which made it hard to pin point just how many of them there were, but from what she’d seen from atop the building before she’d started this pursuit it looked like thousands of them, she had to get that hatchling off the ground and fast.  
Pretty soon the hatchling’s luck ran out, it had been running through the twisting and turning alleyways in an attempt to throw off its pursuers, but all it had done was manage to funnel the animal-humans into the alleys three abreast around it as they scrambled to catch up with it and now it had run into a dead end.  
The hatchling beat its fists against the wall in front of it in frustration and fear, it looked around in a desperate attempt to find a way out, it tried to pull bars from windows, it desperately tried electronically locked doors and it even tried to climb a fifteen-foot-high fence, but there was no escape from this, the horde scrambled and fought their way around the corner until they were stood blocking the only way out, the hatchling crouched down and hugged its knees and from where she was high above them she could hear it’s sobs echoing up to her, she would have liked time to be able to do introductions properly so that she could have shown the hatchling that it didn’t have to be scared of her, but there was no time left, it was time to act.  
Jumping from the balcony of the building on which she was hanging she dropped straight down, she hit the ground in front of the hatchling with enough force to crack the floor, the hatchling jumped backwards and away from her pressing its back to the wall behind them, as she stood back up to her full height she released a full on battle cry in the direction of the crazed animal-humans and for a second the mighty roar caused them to halt their charge as they looked at the newcomer, but she knew from experience that these things were not even slightly scared of her or really anything to be fair, so quick as a flash while they were confused by what had just happened she whirled around on the spot and ran towards the cowering hatchling who was trying to make itself as small as possible as to evade detection, she grabbed it roughly and picked it up off the ground holding it dangling in front of her face, “Please don’t kill me!!” a distinctly feminine sounding voice sobbed from under the hood she was wearing, but there was no time here for proper introductions so she flicked her tail up and wrapped it tightly around the hatchling’s waist so that her hands would be free, then as the animal-humans regained their senses and charged at her screeching again she was just able to leap clear and grip onto the wall high above their heads, her claws were dug into the wall giving plenty of leverage for her next jump which took her even higher above them, from below them she could hear the crazed howls of anger and frustration in being denied their prey, on top of the building she glanced down into the ally below but there were so many of them that it was more like a seething mass of ants than people.  
From behind her she could hear sobbing coming from the hatchling that she was carrying wrapped in her tail, so slowly she turned and placed her down on the ground before releasing her from her coiled tail.  
The hatchling quickly backed away from her holding out her hands in front of her protectively, slowly she lowered herself down so that she was at the same level as the hatchling and she gave a soft reassuring chirp in order to try and show her that she didn’t mean her any harm, she even tried giving her a friendly hiss in order to make her feel more at ease, but it didn’t work if anything it seemed to make her even more scared of her, if only she could communicate with the hatchling somehow, then it hit her, her royal jelly, she remembered overhearing some of the humans when they were talking about it, they were impressed by the healing properties of it when put up against a verity of wounds, they also said that it imbued the receiver with a whole host of abilities but they didn’t discuss those, she also remembered that they had tested it on Tyler, maybe that was why he’d been the only one who had been able to communicate with her, it was worth a shot at the very least, though she didn’t think that getting the hatchling to eat her royal jelly was going to be easy, but she did know one way she could do it, it would be rather unpleasant for the hatchling, but it would work and if it meant that afterwards they be able to communicate then it was worth the price she figured.  
As she watched the hatchling still holding her hands up in defence she slowly took a step forwards and used her hand to reach for the hatchling’s hood, with a quick flick she was able to make it fall around her shoulders revealing her face for the first time, to her surprise the hatchling was not human, but rather a feline.  
She had fur as black as the night itself covering her whole body but the bluest eyes that she’d ever seen in her life, eyes that were filled with fear, “A-A-Are you going to eat me?” the hatchling asked in a trembling voice in perfect human, rather than answer she simply stroked the sides of her head with her long fingers, the hatchling’s fur was remarkably soft and smooth, but this next part was not going to be pleasant for either of them, she gripped the sides of the hatchling’s head with her hands tightly and the hatchling opened her mouth to scream in fear, but before she could the queen plunged her head forwards and gripped the sides of her face with her mandibles and plunged her inner mouth into the hatchling’s mouth.  
The surprise caused the hatchling to swallow the injection of royal jelly from the queen’s inner mouth before she’d even realised what was happening, she only gave her a small amount as she had no idea what it would do to a member of her species, as she quickly released her the hatchling dropped to her knees and began to chough and retch as her body tried to get rid of the substance, but she was unable to expel the royal jelly as due to its nature it would be almost instantly absorbed into her blood stream through the walls of her oesophagus, instantly she collapsed onto her face and began to shake violently, “Oh shit I’ve killed her!!” the queen yelled as she dropped to her knees and quickly cradled the feline hatchling in her long arms,   
“Please don’t die, I only wanted to be able to talk to you” she said quietly as she rocked the hatchling back and forth in her arms as she held her to her chest, but just as the panic began to set in the hatchling’s breathing began to stabilize and she seemed to calm down, looking down at the young feline in her arms she saw that her big blue eyes were wide open and she was looking up at her.   
“Oh thank goodness you’re ok, I thought I’d killed you!” the queen exclaimed looking at the young hatchling in her arms,   
“You mean you’re not going kill me?” the hatchling asked, the queen’s eyes nearly popped out of her head,   
“Wait you heard me!?” she exclaimed moving the hatchling up so that they were face to face, she looked thoughtful for a moment,   
“Yeah but it’s not like talking, it’s like I can hear you in my brain” she replied, the queen hugged her against her chest in triumph and happiness,   
“It worked!!” she said happily,   
“What worked?” the confused sounding hatchling asked,  
“My royal jelly! It’s what’s letting me speak to you” the queen replied,   
“Oh so that’s what the nasty stuff you shot down my throat is called” the hatchling said accusingly, the queen looked a little sheepish.   
“Yeah sorry about that, but I couldn’t think of another way to get you to eat it” she said,  
“I’m not surprised no one wants to eat that stuff, it tastes real nasty and did you have to tongue kiss me?” the hatchling said wiping her mouth and tongue furiously on her sleeve,  
“Kiss you?” the queen asked in surprise,  
“Yeah the thing where you put your lips to mine and shoved your tongue in my mouth, which is real icky by the way, it’s called kissing and my mother taught me that your only supposed to do it with someone you love!!” the hatchling said in between tongue wipes, obviously still trying to get the taste out of her mouth.   
“Kissing hmmmmm” the queen said thoughtfully and as she did some of Tyler’s memories swam into her mind of the times he’d kissed his mate and she realised that the hatchling was right, if she could have blushed she’d have turned bright crimson right now.  
“Well at least we can understand each other now, so I guess a quick kiss was worth it huh?” the queen asked hopefully looking at the hatchling who was still sat on her lap, come to think of it since she’d woken up from the shock that her body had gone into because of the royal jelly she hadn’t even tried to move off her, nor did she smell of fear anymore, now it was the hatchling’s turn to look thoughtful.  
“Hmmmm I guess you’re right, I mean you look all big and scary but you seem ok and I guess you did save me from the crazies, but please don’t kiss me again I want to save them for the man I’ll one-day love” she said looking the queen right in the eye,   
“No more kisses I promise” the queen said smiling all over her face which the hatchling returned.  
“So what are you anyway? I’ve never seen anything like you before and I’ve seen lots of races, my favourite is the Yaujta as they act like all big rough tough hunters but all the ones at my school are sweet really” the hatchling said looking up at the queen,   
“Humans call my kind Xenomorphs” the queen said smiling at the hatchling,   
“Xeno-Xeno-Xenomorph” the hatchling said in a kind of stammer as she tried to get it right, the queen nodded,   
“Well I’m a Felenis and my name is Missiltine, but everyone just calls me Missy for some reason” Missiltine said smiling at her,   
“Missy, I like it” the queen said smiling back at her, Missy cocked her head to one side with a look of curiosity on her face,   
“You never did tell me your name” she said in a very matter of fact voice, suddenly it was the queen’s turn to cock her head curiously,   
“Well I don’t know if it counts but a very dear friend of mine always used to call me Macha” the queen said, Missy rubbed her chin thoughtfully,   
“Macha huh? Sounds exotic, I like it!” she said smiling,   
“My friend said that it was the name of a Celtic goddess whatever that is” Macha said, Missy smiled again and offered her a hand,   
“Well it’s nice to meet you Macha and thanks for saving me from the crazies” she said, Macha looked at the young girl’s hand in confusion unsure what she was supposed to do,   
“You’re supposed to shake it, it’s a human thing but I kinda like it” Missy said prompting her when she saw her confusion, Macha reached down and took hold of her entire arm and shook it up and down a couple of times, Missy laughed in a rather sweet and innocent sounding voice,   
“No silly just my hand not my entire arm” she said still giggling, Macha looked at her hand again and she imitated the way the youngster held hers out and as soon as she did Missy grabbed her hand and shook it a couple of times before letting go, “There we go now you know the human sign of greeting and of trust” she said smiling,   
“Trust” Macha said slowly with a smile crossing her face, if the young hatchling called Missy trusted her now, could she be the first friend other than Tyler that she’d ever made? She really hoped so.  
Suddenly there was a loud angry screeching noise from their left, both of them turned to look just in time to see a window shatter outwards onto the roof they were currently on, a whole crowd of people spilled out onto the roof, most at the front fell forwards over the lip of the window and were instantly trampled under the feet of the ones behind them, Missy was up and on her feet in a heartbeat, “The crazies found us!!” she said grabbing hold of Macha’s arm and trying to pull her away, in an instant the crowd had locked on to the sound of the young girl’s voice and a massive angry roar emanated from it as they began to charge right at them, Macha turned quickly and with her strong arms flipped Missy up and over her head, for a millisecond the confused looking upside down face of the young feline girl was right nose to nose with her own as she passed over her head, she landed on her back with an whoosh of escaping breath.   
“Hold on Missy this will get rough” Macha said to the young girl, instantly she felt her grip hold of her shoulders and her dorsal spines with her hands and her little legs wrapped themselves around her back as best they could, the first of the crazed animal-humans reached them and was instantly sent flying backwards with enough force to cut a path right through the charging crowd, Macha flicked her tail in annoyance after the strike, “Come on you fuckers let’s see what you got!!” she roared at them, but to their uninitiated ears it probably just sounded like a rather loud screech, as it happened challenging them wasn’t really necessary as even though one of their own had been turned into a human projectile the others never even broke their forward stride, Macha spun on the spot using her mighty tail as a whip to cleave right through their front two ranks as they got in range, the hardened tip cut right through their flesh like it was butter and combines with her strength and sheer weight it decimated their front ranks with one hit, from her right she caught a glimpse of an object going airborne and heading in their direction, with her high speed reflexes she was easily able to intercept the jumping human with her large hand grabbing it around the throat.   
“Don’t let them bite you or you’ll turn into one of them!!” Missy yelled from her back shouting to be heard over the crescendo of screeches and roars from the crowd, with a deft flick of her wrist Macha snapped the human’s neck and threw the now immobilised but still alive human at the oncoming crowd, it took out at least twenty of them in another straight line, but as soon as the twenty fell another forty replaced them, there seemed to be no end to the oncoming mass of bodies rushing out of the broken windows right at them, “We have to get out of here or their going to surround us and turn us into them!!” Missy yelled, Macha agreed with a nod of her large head and she quickly looked for an escape route off the roof, through one of the gaps she’d created she noticed an easy jump to the roof of the next building.  
“Hold on tight Missy this is going to be a pretty rough ride” Macha said and instantly she felt the young hatchling grip hold of her back tighter, so leaning forwards and taking huge strides she took off at a run.  
As she sprinted through the gap it was like a forest of arms reaching for them both on either side as the crazed animal-humans desperately tried to grab at them both, she thought about using either her claws or her tail to try and cleave their arms off but at the same time she realised that this would only slow her down, so focusing all of her energy into her speed she picked up her pace to maximum and she hit the ledge at full sprint, compressing her long powerful legs she pushed off into a powerful jump that sent them both sailing through the air, “Whooooooo!!” Missy yelled as they were both airborne over the alleyway below them, they could both see the still seething masses below them as well so Macha know that this roof they were going to land on wasn’t going to be safe either, she needed to get Missy out of the immediate area so that they lost their pursuers, the both slammed into the second white topped roof with enough force as to crack the cement, without even missing a beat Macha took off in a run now using all fours instead of just her powerful back legs, to her this was just as comfortable as being bipedal, above her Missy grabbed hold of her dorsal spines tighter and together with the young hatchling riding her back like a jockey she ran full tilt across this roof before going into another massive leap.  
It took a total of fifteen rooftops before they were clear of the crowds below them, but finally they were able to get off the rooftops and down back onto the streets, fortunately the numbers here were next to none but there were enough of them that it meant that they still had to keep moving, suddenly Missy tapped her on the head and as she glanced up she could see the young hatchling pointing, “Head for the big red building over there, that’s where I’ve been living, it’s safe there as they can’t get in there from the ground” she said, Macha followed where she was pointing and she immediately noticed a large red coloured building that looked like a giant brick, it was vastly different to the curved and smooth looking human architecture that was surrounding them on all sides, but this thing looked flat and blocky by comparison, but she trusted the young hatchling riding on her back as she knew far more about this human city than she did so if she said it was safe then she believed her, so changing course she headed off for the big large red brick in the distance.  
After she was out of sight of the last of the crowd on the ground Macha slowed her pace and began to walk, she figured that stealth would be more of an ally here rather than speed as her running was rather noisy on all of these human surfaces, her claws made and awful clicking and clacking noise as she ran and she figured that even as they lost their pursuers they’d only gain new ones if they didn’t move smart here, the road they were on was pretty wide and there abandoned human machines everywhere, mostly crashed into either buildings or each other and to heavily damaged to move, she remembered these things from her escape, they were human transport machines and she remembered happy looking humans whizzing about in them going to wherever it was they were headed, but now they were just sad crumpled remains of those once fantastical wonders of human technology.  
Now they’d slowed down she was able to get a good look at their surroundings, they were walking along a black surfaced road of some kind with white lines every so many feet, apart from the various transport machines there was just rubbish and abandoned belongings everywhere, things like backpacks and cases that humans used to carry things around it were here and there, most of them seemed to be burst open spilling their contents around, probably the reason they got abandoned in the first place, as they passed by close to one little pink case with wheels on the bottom and a long white handle Macha noticed what looked like a miniature bear was stuck out of the top of it, for some reason that sight of the smiling little brown furred bear made her rather sad, the scent that clung faintly to it which with her rather powerful sense of smell she could detect even at a few feet was defiantly that of a human hatchling, she found herself wondering if they were alright.  
Every building around them looked abandoned and totally devoid of life, but there was a distinct and very familiar smell that was in the air in every direction she looked, at first she thought it was the smell of death, but this was far more bitter than that, it was the smell that she’d first encountered when her Tyler had turned into one of these creatures, it seemed that they all reeked of this bile inducing piss smell.  
A sudden thought struck her as they moved slowly and cautiously along the road, “Hey Missy if there is now way in from the ground, how do we get into the red building?” she asked, Missy pointed above them to what looked like a set of long metal poles that wound away from them like to metal snakes side by side, “We use the monorail, don’t worry it’s not powered up anymore, since the lights when out it’s been dead and good thing too, because it’s the only way to get into the building, that’s kinda why I chose it” she said, Macha looked at the thin looking rails that wound through the city and nodded, this hatchling was smart, so slowly she moved to a large metal pylon that supported the rail and cautiously she gripped it in her hands before trying to shake it, thankfully it didn’t move so it would probably hold her weight.  
The climb onto the rails was easier than moving along them, Missy had jumped off her back and onto the rails ahead of her, but unlike the young hatchling she couldn’t happily skip along the thing metal rails, more like shuffle along on all fours while clinging on for dear life with all four of her claws.  
After an hour and a half of swinging and shuffling they finally made it to the building just as the light began to fade and the sun began to drop, from the monorail there appeared to be a platform of some kind that connected the building to the monorail, as she saw it Macha increased her speed of shuffle, she just couldn’t wait to get off these bloody rails.  
Gleefully jumping from the rail to the platform Missy skipped down the jutting concrete path, Macha joined her and had never been so glad to be on solid ground in her life, “Come on slow poke, I’ll show you where I live, it’s pretty cool” she said skipping up to Macha and grabbing her hand in both of hers and pulling her towards a doorway.  
As they reached it Macha noticed a large metal door that had been left open, “I’m pretty glad that this was open as the power went out or I’d have never managed to get in, there’s no way I could have moved something that big on my own, tough you’d probably have had no problems, you look way stronger than me” she said pointing at the huge metal door, inside it led to a large lobby kinda like the one she remembered from the building that they’d kept her in while experimenting on her, but instead of white marble everywhere there was just flat metal bulkheads and plates, “It’s some kinda warehouse for a company who make machines” Missy said pointing off into the dark distance but with her superior night vision darkness was no problems for her, beyond the lobby there was a large guard rail and a vast open space that must be the main interior of the building, Missy led her up to the rail and looking over it she could see huge lines around the massive room all filled with various machine parts, down to the right she noticed massive black and yellow blast style door,   
“I thought you said there was no way into the building from the ground?” Macha said pointing at the door, Missy followed where she was pointing and her feline night vison easily picked out the door and she nodded,  
“Oh yeah that thing, it’s ok it’s totally sealed and nothing is getting through that thing which I’m real glad of” she said, Macha cocked her head to one side curiously,   
“Why what’s on the other side of it?” she asked,  
“It leads into the big train tunnels below the city, they probably used to use the massive trains down there to move the machines around to whoever had bought them, but the problems is those tunnels connect to the sewers at various points” Missy said,  
“What’s wrong with the sewers?” Macha asked and Missy shot her a looked that silently asked if she was crazy,   
“They’re crawling with really pissed off monsters that would probably even give you a run for your money, real nasty big black things that will tear every part of your body off and that’s if they’re in a good mood” she said in a very matter of fact tone, Macha looked back at the door and she could have sworn she heard a distant screech that was definitely not human, it seemed to echo directly underneath them and away into the distance, suddenly she was very glad that she was not in the sewers.


	6. Breakout

‘Hi guys GhostNobody here, this time with a fair bit more of a sombre mood than usual. Today I had a snap reminder of how fragile life is and how cruel this mortal coil of ours can be. I lost my grandfather today. You know it’s funny, we see death everyday around the world and we shake it off like its nothing, but it’s only when it hits us close that we are truly reminded of what a small and fragile creature we truly are, but don’t worry I’m not going to wallow in darkness here. I’m going to remember the strengths and fond memories that this marvel of a man marked me with. This man that gave me my love of reading and my passion to do more than just read someone else’s words and enjoy them, but to have people read mine and have the same enjoyment caused by something that I imagined and made real for them. Let me also take this opportunity to say something that I know sounds cliché but I’m going to say anyway, please go to your loved one as remind them how much you love them and care about them, even if you know they know it, just do it anyway, because trust me on this, there will come a day when that opportunity has come and gone and you’ll wish you did or you’ll thank me that did, don’t let it be the first one people, just don’t.  
I’m dedicating this chapter to the kindest, most patient and gentlest man, that I have ever had the distinct privilege to know.   
You gave me this passion and so many other things and I’m going to damn well use them, so this one’s for you gramps, good luck on your next journey, hope you’re happy where ever you are, I’ll miss you.  
This is GhostNobody signing off and saying on with the show……..’

Chapter 6: Breakout.  
“Jesus Christ these fuckers are persistent!!” Aiden yelled to no-one as he turned mid run and let loose yet another volley of highly charged plasma projectiles in the direction of the pursuing Xenos, they screeched angrily at him as the rounds tore through them, his PIMP made short work of them even in its lowest powered setting which was submachine gun mode which as it turned out was perfect for the confines of the tunnel.   
It had been specifically designed to combat creatures like Xenomorphs after studying the effects of Yaujta plasma cannons and how effective they were at dispatching them when compared to standard human weaponry.  
The first round he fired found the arm of a Xeno that was hanging from the ceiling, it promptly removed it at the elbow sending it screeching down to the floor, but rather than writhe in pain it just immediately sprung back up and continued the pursuit, Aiden had also noticed that body shots seemed to do fuck all to slow them down.   
In fact the only way this seemed to slow them down was when the ones behind fell through the holes opened up in the tunnel floor by the acidic blood eating it away.  
Aiden’s footfalls echoed down the tunnel as he ran full tilt away from the pursuing Xeno’s, from his training and his experience Aiden knew that it was pretty pointless to run from Xeno’s as due to their speed and agility in most environments they would inevitably catch you and then you’d get hit from behind.   
His training had taught him the best way to deal with this particular foe was to deal with them head on, not to let them use either their agility or their formidable stealth skills to get around you and flank you, but these were not your garden verity Xeno’s, there was something vastly different and in Aiden’s view very wrong with them.   
This particular type of Xeno didn’t seem to care if they got hurt or not, most Xeno’s were pretty durable and could shrug off a whole host of injuries and wounds, but even the most robust classes of Xeno’s like the Praetorians who still try to avoid taking damage or injury wherever possible.   
These fuckers just didn’t seem to care, blow off arms, legs or tails and they just still kept coming as if it was nothing to them, also what was also catching Aiden’s attention was the growths that seemed to be covering their bodies, they looked like some sort of coral stuck to their hides, he’d love to have gotten chance to have taken a closer look or even to have gotten some samples for Ice to work on, but there were just way too many of them.   
Since he’d engaged that first one after crash landing they come out of the other adjoining tunnels like fucking ants when you pour hot water down their nests and just about as pissed off as them as well.  
The water in the bottom of the tunnel was really hampering his running speed, which was a problem the Xeno’s were for the most part not having due to the fact half of the fuckers were on the wall and the ceiling, a sudden change in air pressure to his immediate right caused his reflexes to kick in and he ducked and rolled left, it was just in time to see a Xeno lunge for him from his right.   
It must have got around him on the wall while he was distracted, it sailed wide and over him slamming face first into the wall on the far side, it seemed to have put everything it had into that jump as it massively over calculated the power required to reach him.   
Not something that normal Xeno’s did to be fair as they were usually very precise in their attacks, but these ones were extremely reckless, but to be fair it’s recovery was nothing short of spectacular.   
Instead of climbing back to its feet it simply compressed its arms and legs and kick flipped backwards off the wall and attempted to grab him while upside down, but Aiden’s reflexes were far faster thanks in part to his cybernetic systems.   
so instead of the flying Xeno grabbing him as it intended it caught a full power punch from Aiden’s cybernetic arm to the face which sent it sailing backwards down the tunnel in the direction of its pursuing comrades.  
As he watched for the briefest second while the flying Xeno slammed into about five of its friends and promptly sent them flying as well he became aware of a fizzing noise, turning to look at his fist as he ran he saw Xeno blood fizzing on the outer skin of his arm, flicking it the blood flew off and onto the nearest wall where it promptly ate through the cement.  
Glancing at the spot where the blood had been he noticed that there wasn’t even a scratch on the arm’s outer skin, “Thank fuck for that Xeno proofing they installed in the metal” he said to himself before another screech from his left this time caused him to turn, yet another one had managed to get level with him, narrowly he was able to just turn his shoulders into a sideways roll and avoid the incoming tail strike, following the roll through its completion he quickly managed to grab the Xeno’s tail with his cyber arm and quickly he swung it around like a hammer thrower and sent it the same way as it’s brother/sister.  
As he charged on through the seemingly endless tunnel Aiden knew that if he didn’t find something to give him an advantage he was done for in this environment, out in the open he was more than a match for your garden verity Xeno’s.   
Before missions he’d often seen T’shara make a prayer to her goddess Paya for a good hunt, hell he’d even joined her more than once as he always figured any edge was a good one in the sort of environments they always found themselves. So silently while running he offered a prayer to the goddess of the hunt for a little bit of help here, then as if in direct answer to his call when he turned the next corner on his right he spotted a large heavy looking door, right now he didn’t care if it was a storage closest, at least it would funnel the Xenos at him one at a time, so changing course mid sprint he made a beeline right for it.  
The door itself looked like it had come right off an old submarine, it was a large dull metal affair with a twist handle in the middle of it, as he reached it Aiden dropped his PIMP on its sling so he could free up his hands, as he grabbed the handle he could feel the resistance in the old rusted mechanism, but rust was no match for the strength that his cybernetic arm had, with one heavy twist the handle screeched loudly and the mechanism moved.  
Spinning the handle rapidly in his hands the bolts at the top and bottom of the door moved inwards, the whole time he was spinning it he could feel the Xeno’s closing on him, “Come on!!” he yelled at the door in desperation as he rapidly cranked the handle.   
Finally, with a dull thud it gave and pulled outwards. As soon as he had the door open enough to slip through he used his cybernetic arm to snap the crank handle off and promptly threw it at the nearest Xeno striking it in the face just as it leapt with its jaws wide open, for a briefest second it looked like a big dog jumping for a Frisbee, that was till the force of the impact took its lower jaws clean off.  
Aiden dashed through the now open door and grabbed it from the other side yanking it closed behind him, he could the hear the Xeno’s screeching and clawing at the outside trying to pulled the door open again, they were literally throwing themselves at the door slamming against the metal, Aiden on the other side was frantically twisting the second handle to get the bolts sealed.  
As the bolts thudded into their cement holders Aiden sagged against door, his breath was ragged from all the running he’d been forced to do, as he listened to the angry screeches on the other side of the door he sure hoped that the rest of his team were having better luck than he was.   
Turning around he got his first good look at the room he was in, thankfully it wasn’t a broom closet but some sort of rest area that seemed to lead into another much narrower tunnel, to his left and right were a few rather old looking metal benches that were covered in rather sparkly dust, though that was probably due to him using night vision.   
Since he’d started this pursuit the only light he’d seen had come from the massive hole he’d made in the ceiling with the drop pod.   
Before setting off down the narrow tunnel Aiden did a quick ammo check on the PIMP’s counter, normally it would have been displayed in his helmet’s visor HUD, but as his helmet was toast he had to rely on the counter on the side of the gun.   
It showed that he had a hundred rounds remaining which meant he’d half depleted this battery, but at least with this weapon if he could find a power port he could use a special adapter in the bandolier to recharge them, it would mean he’d have to spend four hours plugged into the wall like a fucking toaster but it at least meant he’d walk away with a full ammo count.  
Placing his weapon back into the shoulder Aiden sighed heavily as he looked down the narrow tunnel, it wasn’t much more than shoulder width and only just over head height for him, he was kinda glad that T’shara wasn’t with him or he’d have a spent most of his time trying to unstick the large Yaujta female from the narrow tunnel walls, or listening to string after string of Yaujta curses when she’d inevitably bang her head on the ceiling, the thought of the big proud huntress swearing at concrete walls and threatening to rip its spine out through its concrete arse made him smile, he hoped she was ok.  
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“Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttt!!!” Spike yelled as he ran, it felt like he’d been running for hours when in reality it had been only about twenty minutes, though for once in his life he was real glad that Inferno had beat the importance of cardio into him in the team’s physical training sessions, glancing over his shoulder he could see that at least half the pack was still on his tail, “These fuckers just don’t give up!!” he panted to himself as he ran.  
Spike had encountered this particular group right outside the building he’d crashed into, once he’d recovered his gear from the pod and established contact with the team, he’d relayed Reaper’s last known position before his pod had gone down and he’d hooked himself into the Spirit net, this was an electronic network that he’d set up which not only relayed real time info and intel from the Ghost’s Shadow to them, but relayed their vitals and current GPS positions to each other once it was tied into the satellites, from what he’d seen of the map they were pretty spread out all over the city, the closest to him was Inferno and she looked like she was on the move heading in his direction.  
The building he’d slammed into was some sort of Sci-fi memorabilia shop and his pod had done a right number on the all the displays and rather collectable figures that had been in the cases, as he’d pulled himself out of the pod and got his gear he’d seen Reaper’s pod scream overhead through the front of the shop window with a huge trail of smoke following it, he watched it disappear before calling in the last position he’d seen it on the Spirit net, as soon as it crashed it had gone off the net, which either meant that it was underground and had lost contact with the satellites tracking it, or well the other possibility he really didn’t want to think about.  
Due to the high amount of electronic warfare gear he carried Spike carried a much smaller weapon than the others, he used a highly modified pulse submachine gun, which used 10mm caseless high speed ammo.  
Tank had really done a number on this thing, kitting it out with a heavy duty integrated supressed barrel, laser enhanced sighting and a holoscope, along with recoil dampening and fore-grip supports to keep the weapon on target even when fired on full auto.   
The weapon was a whole lot of mean in a very small package, granted it wasn’t any kinda patch on things like Reaper’s PIMP gun, or Tank’s pulse minigun, or even on Inferno’s highly modified twin plasma casters, but it could hold its own in just about any circumstance and given that he almost always found himself indoors trying to hack into a server or controlling a security system it was perfect.  
As he’d exited the shop after taking a quick look at some of the surviving stock and making a mental note to come back and grab some if he got chance, he’d found himself standing in the bright sunshine right in the middle of a high street shopping district, but it wasn’t what he’d expected, as he’d glanced around if the shop shutters weren’t down then their windows were busted through and the interiors trashed, it looked like they’d been looted, there were deserted or crashed hover cars in every direction he looked, some just left abandoned with all the doors open and no signs of life, others were slammed through walls or windows and were sticking out of just about everywhere, “What the fuck?” he said looking at the scene of quiet chaos, that’s when he noticed the large group of people just standing there just down the street from him, he figured they’d been watching the pods come in, at least he might have a chance to get some intel here, as it turned out he got much more than he bargained for.  
“Errr hi guys, listen this isn’t an invasion or anything, we’re here to help” Spike said approaching the group slowly keeping his weapon lowered as to try and appear friendly. He could already see that it was a large group of civilians.  
As he spoke the entire group turned as one and looked right at him, he instantly froze in place, even from here he could tell that something was very wrong with them, lots of them seemed to have weird growths sticking off them like some sort of dark coloured coral, the nearest one to him was a Yaujta male, or at least he used to be, at least half of his face had been replaced with this coral like growth that jutted out in large spikes like half his head had been turned into a Morningstar.  
“What the……..” Spike began, but before he could finish the Yaujta male let out a blood curdling roar and as one the entire crowd charged right at him at full tilt, without hesitation Spike pulled his weapon up and took aim at the nearest one, “Don’t move or you will be fired upon!!!” he yelled, but he could already see that they had no intention of stopping so he opened fire, his submachine gun made a rapid series of dull thuds as it fired opening up a series of holes in the male Yaujta’s chest, but it didn’t even seem to faze him, he just kept coming, along with all the rest of them, Spike knew that if he stood and fought he wouldn’t stand a chance so he did the only thing he could do, he turned and ran.  
As he ran he activated his comms, “Spike to all call signs, have encountered a group of locals, they are most definitely hostile, something’s fucking wrong with them avoid contact at all costs!!” he yelled as he ran, Tank’s voice burst in over the comms,   
“What’s happening laddie?” he asked, in between gasps for air Spike replied,   
“Spotted a group of locals near my LZ, went over to them to try and gain intel but before I got near they charged me, a few of them have some sort of weird coral like shit growing all over them, so possible bio hazard event in progress, will attempt to confirm as soon as I can shake these fuckers off my tail!” he said turning a sharp corner into a tight alleyway between two rows of buildings.  
“Roger that, stay alive laddie I’m on me way to you” Tank replied, as he went to run under a fire escape something swung down and grabbed him swinging him up and off his feet,   
“Whoa fuck!!!!” he yelled as he was flipped through the air and on to the platform, he skidded along it hitting his back against a railing, without a second’s hesitation instantly readied his submachine gun looking for a target, but in front of him was only a shimmer which he instantly recognised as a Yaujta cloaking device.  
As Inferno decloaked Spike breathed a sigh of relief, he’d never been so glad to see the big huntress in his life, he went to speak but instantly she raised her hand to her face shield in the universal gesture for ‘Shut the fuck up’ more politely known as please be quiet.  
This confused Spike for a second, but as he heard all the screeching locals running under them now in pursuit of a ghost he understood what she was doing, from where he was laid he was invisible to them on the ground as they’d have no reason to look up unless he gave them one.  
As the last of them proceeded through the alleyway following the pack Spike could see that some of them could barely walk let alone run, they seemed to either shuffle along or even drag themselves, he’d noticed quite a few at the back had leg injuries or even no legs, but still they kept moving, doggedly dragging themselves after their invisible quarry, it took a solid fifteen minutes for the last of them to clear out from under them and then out of earshot, finally Inferno turned to face him from where she’d been crouched watching the crowd, “Are you hurt?” she asked in a flat tone, quickly checking himself he realised he was fine and shook his head.   
“Good” she said flatly again,  
“What the fuck is going on Inferno? What the fuck is wrong with them?” he asked standing up and looking in the direction the crowd had gone,   
“I believe I agree with your earlier assessment of a possible bio hazard event, I have seen whole crowds of civilians hunting in packs, they appear to roam aimlessly until something catches their attention then they all charge at it with reckless abandon in an attempt to catch it” she said looking in the direction the crowd had gone.   
“Yeah I saw that part first hand, man those fuckers are fast, well some of them are anyway” he said as he watched what appeared to be a young human female, dragging herself along with her one remaining arm below them, it appeared that both of her legs and her other arm had been severed by something and she was now left with only her left arm, but that didn’t seem to deter her in the slightest.  
The comms crackled in both of their helmets simultaneously, “Spike come in, sit rep?” Moodstone’s voice said, pressing his PTT Spike replied,   
“I’m no longer under pursuit, have met up with Inferno about two clicks from my LZ” he said and he noticed the big Yaujta giving him a look that said, ‘Saved your arse more like’,   
“How about you guys?” he asked back,   
“I have met up with Tank and Whisper, we’re pretty close to the shuttle station but have yet to encounter any hostiles” she said, then another voice chimed in.  
“This is Ice, I’m with Picasso and we’re close to what looks like some sort of mega hospital, we haven’t encountered any hostiles as of yet, if this is some sort of bio hazard it could be worth checking out, anybody got any news on Reaper yet?” she said, Spike saw Inferno clench and unclench her fists as she stood looking over the balcony, knowing her as well as he did, he knew that this wasn’t a sign of anger with her, but of worry.  
As Reaper was the squad leader when he was either incapacitated or if he was killed second in command fell to Inferno, she reached for her PTT.   
“This is Inferno, myself and Spike are going to go looking for and recover Reaper, Ice and Picasso if this is a bio hazard event we need as much intel as we can get, so you two check out the hospital and see what you can find, though I advise caution, if it is a bio hazard there’s a good likelihood of high levels of infected inside. Tank, Moodstone and Whisper see if you can find a defensible building and secure it, the shuttle station maybe a god place to start, if possible set up a base camp, Inferno out” she said her voice filled with authority.   
In fact, it was a common joke around the team that the only person that she’d ever take orders from was Reaper, though mainly the joke part revolved around them being in bed together or some form of sexual liaison.   
Though those ones were never made to her face as all of the other team members were rather fond of their own faces. so if he ever died and someone else got promoted in his place they were fucked already.  
“Roger that” came the replies one by one through the comms, Inferno turned to Spike,  
“Where was the last place you saw Reaper’s pod?” she asked, quick as a flash he pulled up the holo emitter on his wrist comp and a topographical map popped up.   
“This is us and this is where I lost contact with his pod’s transmitter, I haven’t received a signal from his suit transmitter yet, so if he’s still with his pod then he’s here, but if not he could be anywhere within this circle” he said pulling up the image of the city in the area where Reaper’s pod had come down.  
“Then this is where we start” she said, Spike nodded, although he didn’t fancy going back down there his friend was in danger and he wasn’t going to let him down.  
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The tunnel didn’t go on for very long thankfully, it opened up into a room with a large circular cover in the ceiling and a ladder set into the wall, “Thank fuck, that must be a surface access” Aiden said to himself.   
Slinging his rifle over his shoulder he quickly moved to the ladder and climbed it till he was directly below the hatch, slowly he lifted it up using his cybernetic arm and peeked out, it was still dark beyond the cover but he couldn’t see anything moving so he slowly lifted it up and climbed out.  
He was in what looked like a subway tunnel, Aiden dropped the hatch back into place and he brought his rifle up.   
To his right in the large tracked tunnel he was in was a dead end, so that meant he was going left, as he turned to move he noticed something up ahead in the gloom, there were about ten shapes moving like liquid shadows in the darkness.  
“Fuck more Xeno’s” Aiden hissed to himself, but unlike the other one’s that had been chasing him these ones were just milling about, slowly and silently he approached till he could see them properly in his night vision, there were nine of the worker class or drones as a lot of people called them, not Aiden though because for his money drones were mindless and these creatures were far from mindless, but it wasn’t them that he was paying attention to, it was the larger Praetorian right smack in the middle of the group.  
It was just standing there as still as a stone watching the wall, Aiden knew that if he was going to get through this tunnel he was going to have to either try and sneak past them or take them out, but given that the tunnel was only wide enough for the train to pass through that pretty much ruled out the sneaking part.   
He was going to have to go loud and hope that there wasn’t any more of them further up ahead, so dropping to one knee Aiden flicked a switch on the side of his PIMP two clicks, instantly the gun hissed and whirred quietly as it’s modular body began to change, the barrel opened up and extended outwards, next up main body extended and Aiden switched his holding position to the new grips and finally a scope popped up out of the body.  
In its sniper mode the PIMP was easily a rival to the most powerful sniper rifles out there, it fired a hyper charged plasma projectile that was about .50 in size at over two thousand feet per second.   
It struck with enough force to stop a hover Mak truck dead in its tracks as it tended to blow half the engine away in a single hit. Aiden lined up on the Praetorian’s head, he knew this was going have to be a quick move otherwise the others were going to be on him before the big guy went down.   
Steadying his breathing he highlighted his targets in a sweep so that he knew exactly where they all were, finally when he was ready he lined up on the big guy’s head again and taking and holding a deep breath he squeezed the trigger.  
The big gun made a high pitched squeak noise rather than a roar, but just because it made a funny noise on firing didn’t make it any less lethal, a point that was proven by the fact that the single projectile blew the big guy’s head clean off and vaporised it.   
Instantly Aiden flicked the switch again and the gun instantly began reconfiguring into its assault rifle mode, a process that only took it a second to complete.   
As the body of the Pretorian was still falling the others began to turn towards where they’d heard the noise come from, but in the time that it had taken them to turn Aiden opened up on them.   
The fast but much smaller projectiles whizzed down the tunnel causing little bubbles of light as they flew, Aiden was aiming for head shots here as it was the only thing that seemed to stop these weird Xeno’s.   
Before they even knew what was happening and before they could react to it four of them were already falling, five left and they moved alright, straight at him screeching the whole time, but not that it did them any good as Aiden stood and fought, only one of them made it close enough to actually strike at him, but even this one made no impact other than making him grab its tail with his cyber hand and slam it head first into the wall like a club, before it could shake the cobwebs out of its head Aiden aimed the PIMP down one handed and finished it with a single shot to the side of the head.  
To conserve ammo Aiden switched the PIMP back into submachine gun mode and took aim back down the tunnel again, but this time there were no further screeching noises or running feet, but Aiden was taking no chances as he moved slowly down the tunnel in the direction that the Xeno’s had come from.  
He was careful as he moved between the bodies because of the acidic blood, a bit further down the tunnel was a darkened platform, but it wasn’t like the normal subway platform he was used to, it was full of heavy machinery that looked like it was designed for train loading, there were two blast style doors at the top of the platform that looked like they been heavily gouged by the Xeno’s trying to get through.   
So he figured that whatever was on the other side was either a way out or maybe people, checking his angles as he moved between the machines Aiden moved slowly, as he reached the blast door he noticed a large circular crank handle on the wall, it was an emergency release for the door so that it could be opened in a power outage, it was also noisy as Aiden began to crank it, the grinding screeching protests of the dented and damaged metal echoed throughout the platform and down the tunnel, the progress was painfully slow even with Aiden’s enhanced strength turning the handle as fast as he could, but as soon as there was a big enough gap under the door Aiden dropped to his belly and crawled through under it.  
Inside the first thing he did was look for another handle to lower the door down again, he didn’t want anything following him up from down there, fortunately there was one and this one wasn’t damaged, so lowering the door was a lot quicker than getting it open, turning around he found himself looking out at a factory floor filled with assembly machines and it was still pitch black, but from somewhere above him he could have sworn he heard voices.

 

In loving memory of Griff.


	7. Enemy of My Enemy

Macha was impressed by her new friend’s ingenuity, high in the machine filled building she’d turned the highest point into her very own little hive, they were high above what her little friend called the factory floor, she had informed Macha that humans and various other species had worked at the factory making machines for making energy and for farming.  
From the lobby they’d followed a winding path of gang ways and stairs that led up to what her little friend told her was the control platform, Macha had quite the problem with some of the gangways as they weren’t exactly designed for someone as big or as heavy as her, fortunately they were made of very strong materials so they held her weight without a problem, but they swaying had Macha gabbing at the rails more than once, Missy seemed to love it whooping as the gangways swooped from left to right every now and then, but finally they reached the top and it was here that Missy had made herself a little hive.  
All the weird looking consoles and tables of the control platform had been covered in various things that Missy had collected from her runs into the city, various little things like what appeared to be stuffed animals and what appeared to be crude looking representations of new born human hatchlings sat staring at her with glass eyes from some of the tables, for some reason they unnerved Macha, no matter where she was standing the things still appeared to be looking right at her, as she was focused on one rather large one that kinda looked like a feline she had failed to notice one to her right, when she turned and nearly hit it with her arm she jumped back and hissed at it in fright, she even primed her tail to strike the highly deadly china hatchling, Missy found this highly amusing, picking up the thing she called a doll and waving at it, Macha just hissed at it in annoyance.  
Right in the centre of the platform missy had hung sheets from a few wires to create a sort of triangular cocoon, inside the cocoon she had arranged a few soft looking fluffy sheets into a sleeping area, next to it was a table and given the collection of drinking vessels and human eating utensils Macha figured that this was her eating area, though she didn’t know what the young hatchling had been eating as she couldn’t see the remains of any freshly hunted prey, but delving into Tyler’s memories she understood that humans got their meats and food from packets, much like the ones she saw scattered around the table.  
“So Whatcha think?” Missy asked gesturing around herself to the entire area, Macha looked around and realised that the whole place was like some sort of shrine to a life that she’d lost, there were pictures both drawn and other types of happy families of both humans and other species on most of the surfaces as well as the dolls, she’d also noticed that now the excitement of the outside had calmed off she could feel a deep sadness emanating from her, she was toying with the idea of penetrating her mind and looking at her memories, but something stopped her as she realised that Missy was looking at her with real hope shining in her eyes, “It looks comfortable, you’ve made yourself a fine little hive here” she said looking around trying not to look in to the eyes of the young hatchling, the pain that was hiding behind those bright eyes was fighting to break out and she didn’t want to be the catalyst,   
“Glad you like it, it is real comfortable, in fact I think it’s more comfortable than the room I used to live in with my mom” Missy said, as she hit the end of that sentence her eyes stopped sparkling and instantly dulled, Macha knew there was real pain there and she decided that it was going to be up to her to help her face it and get through it, also she was being overwhelmed by an incredible urge to just hold the small hatchling in her big arms for some reason,   
“What happened to your parents Missy?” Macha asked slowly and in as soft a voice as she could manage, the young hatchling glanced up at her and then down at her feet before turning her back to her,   
“They died, just like everyone else I knew, those things out there got them and they turned into them, me and my mom were at our apartment, my mom was making tea and I was telling her about school that day, then there was this real loud banging at the door and screaming, my mom went to see what was happening but before she could get to the door it just burst in like it was made of paper and there were all these people, all crazy and twitch and stuff, before my mom could do anything they were on her and they were biting her, she screamed at me to run so I did, I went out of my bedroom window and onto the fire escape which led down to the street, I ran and I ran not stopping or looking back, I ran all the way to my dad’s place but when I got there it was on fire, but there were no fire trucks or people putting it out just crazy people running around in the street biting other people, no-one would tell me what happened they just all ran past me and ignored me like I wasn’t even there, I didn’t know what to do so I ran and I hid in a park near to my dad’s place that he used to take me to, I stayed there for I don’t know two maybe three days, hiding in the bushes not moving or even daring to look out, but pretty soon it got really quiet and I came out, there was no-one, so I just wandered from place to place, I was really hungry and thirsty and the shops were abandoned, so I just walked in and took whatever I wanted, pretty soon I realised that no-one was coming back, whatever this thing is that makes people crazy it’s from the bites, once they bite you it’s too late, you’re one of them, so I got together some gear from certain places and I wandered never staying in the same place more than once in case the crazies found me, well that was till I found this place, the crazies don’t climb so good and this place is real hard to get into, so it’s like perfect to hide in” she said sniffing but trying to smile at the end, Macha felt really sorry for her and she also hated herself for asking that question, she took a few steps towards Missy as she stood with her back to her,   
“My dad left my mom a few years ago, but I lived with my mom and it was pretty cool, I mean yeah I missed my dad but I always got to see him on weekends, we were going to go to Earth on holiday this year and I was going to get to see the human home world, my dad was saving all his pay to take me there as I’ve always wanted to see it, but I guess that’s not going to happen now……..” she said and her voice trailed off, Mach sat down on the floor behind her and without warning pulled the young female into a tight embrace that forced her to sit back into her lap, for a second she felt the young hatchling stiffen as she was surprised by the hug, but then she seemed to relax and she felt her trying to turn around so she allowed her to, instantly the young female wrapped her small arms around her midriff and held on tightly while still seated in her lap,   
“I miss them so much Macha” she said her voice welling with emotion, softly Macha began to stroke the back of the young female’s head and her soft fur felt nice to her touch,   
“I know” she said softly feeling her pain and loss as plain as day from her mind, then Missy looked up at Macha,   
“Y-Y-Y-You’re not going to leave me too are you?” she stammered in a soft voice racked by sobs, Macha felt her heart melt in her chest at the young hatchlings trust of her and obvious need of her, it made her think about how much she really needed her too,   
“Never, I’m going to protect you from now on, nothing will ever harm you while you have me at your side, this I swear to you” Macha said in a voice filled with both defiance and softness all at once, without saying a word Missy just buried her face back into her chest and clung onto her tightly.  
Looking over her shoulder Missy looked up at Macha, she was smiling now, “Are you hungry? I have food” she said, Macha cocked her head curiously, thinking about it she was pretty hungry she hadn’t eaten since her return to the city and she hadn’t really had time to go hunting, that also got her wondering what sort of prey would be found in the city anyway,   
“I am kinda hungry, thank you” Macha said,   
“Actually what do you eat?” Missy asked,  
“Pretty much just meat but saying that I haven’t really tried anything else if I’m honest” Macha said thoughtfully, she knew most other sentient species were omnivores and ate a verity of things from Tyler’s memories, weirdly the taste and texture of Tyler’s favourite snack popped into her head like she’d been eating them her whole life, he absolutely loved strawberry Poptarts and straight away she could taste them as if she was actually eating them.  
Missy jumped up from her lap and went over to a large pile of boxes that was next to her little nest, she rummaged around for a bit and then she brought out quite a few packets, “I don’t know if these will do, meat is kinda hard to get these days as it all went off when the electricity went off and the shop fridges messed up, I still have some stewed stuff in cans but this would probably taste better to you” she said walking over to her and holding out the packets, taking them Macha was confused by the packets at first till she realised that she had to rip the top off by using the strip that passed through it, the first packet she tried she tore in half but she still managed to get what was inside out, it looked like dried skin to her eyes but it smelled like meat, sort of.  
Holding it up she opened out her mandibles and poked out her inner jaws to take a bite, as she did she was aware of Missy staring at her in surprise, glancing at her “What?” she asked,   
“You have two mouths!! That’s sooo cool!” Missy said as Macha took a bite with her inner mouth and pulled the tough meat into her mouth, after a couple of chews the flavour hit her in a wave, Macha’s face froze mid chew and she looked at the expectant young girl,   
“Well? Is it good?” Missy asked, Macha forced herself to swallow the foul tasting salty mess that was currently lodged in her throat, slowly she put down the other half and pushed it away from her,   
“Not really to my taste” she said diplomatically, Missy looked at another of the jerky packs,   
“I’m not much of a fan either” she said turning to place it down on the table, as she did she missed Macha franticly rubbing at her tongue and inner jaws trying to get the foul taste out of her mouth.  
It turned out that the tinned stewed steak was much more to Macha’s palate, so while she gobbled up the contents of her second can of that Missy sat eating something called Chilli and rice, which was apparently a human delicacy, to be fair it smelled rather spicy and she really didn’t fancy it herself.  
After their meal Missy declared with a rather adorable yawn that it was time for bed, now came the challenge of finding a space for Macha to sleep comfortably, as it turned out the best place and really the only one big enough for her was the big nest that Missy had made for herself out of salvaged blankets and other materials in the centre of the platform, with a little readjusting and moving of some of the blankets, quilts and cushions they made something that sort of resembled a giant four poster bed crossed with a tent, although Missy was making out that she was doing Macha a favour by sharing her sleeping space with her Macha could feel that the young girl was secretly happy that she got to cuddle with her while she slept, so now Macha was laid on her side in the middle of all the blankets and quilts with the young girl pressed against her stomach and chest, the young hatchling yawned cutely again, “Goodnight Macha, sweet dreams” she said,   
“Good night Missy” Macha replied softly as she cradled the youngster in her arms, pretty soon the both of them were snoring their heads off.  
It didn’t feel like she’d been asleep very long when she was woken by a loud screeching noise, sitting up bolt upright Macha narrowly avoided tangling herself up in the sheets of their nest, Missy fell off her and woke up as well, “Huh? What’s going on?” she asked sleepily as she untangled herself from the quilts, Macha held up a hand to her lips to silence the young girl as she struggled to hear what had woken her, then it came again piercing the air, a loud grinding screeching noise, like metal scraping against metal, now Missy hear it too and a look of fear passed over her face, “What’s that!?” she exclaimed, Macha motioned for the youngster to stay put and she climbed out of the nest and moved slowly and stealthily to the edge of the platform, looking down at first she saw nothing, but then the slow movement and the noise drew her attention, it was coming from the blast door on the bottom level.  
Macha became aware of Missy standing to her left, “Oh shit, it’s coming from the door!” she said with fear permeating her voice, as they watched they could both see the door inching it’s way upwards,   
“The monsters are going to get in!” Missy said her voice staring to fill with panic,   
“Don’t worry, whatever comes through that door I will protect you” Macha said her voice gaining a hard edge that made Missy look at her, she could see that her big Xeno friend was standing defiant and ready, this helped steel her nerves, she nodded and then looked back down at the blast door just as it opened a little more, now there was enough of a gap ender the door for something to crawl under it and in fact that’s exactly what happened, but it wasn’t what either of them was expecting, as the creature pulled itself under the door and got to its feet both Missy and Macha looked at each other,   
“That’s a human!” they both exclaimed in unison.  
As they both watched in silent shock from their high perch the human who was dressed in some sort of battle armour pulled himself up from the floor and quickly turned back to the door, straight away he began lowering the door back into its closed position once again securing the factory floor from the monsters in the subway, Missy found herself in awe of this human, it would have been no small feat to have made it through that place alive. After he had secured the door he pulled a weapon from his back and placing it into his shoulder he began to move into the factory floor.  
“We should go down there and say hello!” Missy exclaimed turning to go towards the gangway, Macha grabbed her shoulder and stopped her,   
“Caution young one, this human is a soldier and he’s armed, we don’t want to surprise him or he may open fire on us before he even knows who we are and besides Xenos and humans don’t have much of a good relationship” Macha said, Missy smiled at her broadly,   
“Don’t worry about that, leave it to me!” she said, Macha turned and looked at her strangely, but before she could stop her Missy turned and grabbed hold of a rope next to the gangway and locking her foot into loop in it swung herself out and over the platform.  
As Macha watched in horror Missy zipped down the rope towards the ground floor, it appeared to be a pulley with a weight on the other side that slowed her decent but it was still rather quick, Macha went to grab the rope to stop her but just as her hand was about to close around it she realised that if she did the sudden stop of the rope could cause Missy to fall, so she was left with no other option than to watch her new friend descend into danger, but that didn’t mean she had to go alone.  
Missy zipped down the rope with butterflies swirling around in her stomach, she hadn’t really thought this through and only now as she zipped towards the ground did it hit her how badly wrong this could go, ‘Well no point worrying about it now it’s happening whether I like it or not, better put my best smile on’ she thought to herself, then before she knew it she hit the ground of the factory floor only fifteen feet from the soldier who upon hearing her instantly snapped his weapon towards her and trained it on her, Missy braced herself for the shot, but it never came.  
After a few tense seconds Missy spoke to break the awkward silence that had filled the air, “Errr hi” she said slowly raising her hand in greeting, slowly the human lowered his weapon and eyed her cautiously,   
“Errr hi” he replied in a surprisingly soft voice, this bolstered Missy’s confidence and she moved slowly from the rope and towards him, she could see his eyes tracking her every movement in the dark and she could also see his hands tensing on his weapon, but he kept it lowered,   
“My name’s Missiltine but you can call me Missy” she said giving him her best smile as she offered her hand for a handshake, he looked at it curiously before slowly lowering his weapon completely and letting it swing on its strap, he brought up his hand and took hers in his and shook it, instantly as he took hold of her hand she noticed that there was something different about his hand and his grip was really strong.  
“Nice to meet you Missy I’m Reaper” the human said, her smile broadened as they shook hands for a few seconds before he released her hand, before they had a chance to say anything else there was a heavy thud from their right and they both turned just in time to see Macha disentangling herself from the pile of wires and circuitry that she’d landed in, she kinda looked like she was fighting a giant mechanical octopus.  
“Holy fucking shit!! It’s a fucking Xeno queen!!!” Reaper said instantly throwing Missy behind him and bringing his weapon up and training it on her, he was about to pull the trigger when Missy jumped in front of him and grabbed the end of his gun,   
“No!!! Don’t shoot my friend!!!” she yelled,  
“Hey what the fuck are you doing?!! Move kid!!” Reaper yelled as he tried to disengage her grip on the end of his gun barrel without hurting her,   
“No!! I won’t let you hurt her!!” Missy yelled hanging on for grim death as Reaper shook the barrel left and right trying to dislodge her, by now Macha had disentangled herself from the wires and had turned to see what was happening and she instantly saw Missy in danger, without thinking she let out a mighty roar and charged forwards towards them, upon hearing and seeing this Reaper flicked the young girl aside with remarkable strength and brought his weapon up on Macha, but it was too late Missy had bought her enough time to close the gap between them, with a mighty flick of her long tail she sent the human sailing sideways and slammed him hard into a large machine with multiple arms that held various tools, he hit it full force with his back hard enough to dent the metal considerably and she heard the whoosh of the air being knocked from his lungs, his weapon skittered sideways along the floor, “How dare you hurt a hatchling in front of me you animal!!!” she roared and she ran forwards she brought her tail up ready to strike the stricken human down, that was until Missy jumped in between them,   
“Stop it!!!” she yelled, holding her arms up in the air, Macha screeched to a halt her claws marking the metal and stopped her attack, she stood with her tail swaying in the air ready to strike,   
“B-B-But he hurt you!” she exclaimed looking at the young girl,   
“I’m fine and I don’t think he meant too, he was just scared. Just like I was when you dropped out of the sky on me back in that alleyway” she said looking at the now unconscious human behind her on the floor, it looked like he’d hit his head pretty hard when Macha had hit him into the machinery, Macha looked from her to him and back, then slowly she lowered her tail and bowed her head in apology, as soon as she saw that Macha was no longer going to attack him Missy turned and quickly went to Reaper’s side, she touched the side of his throat that was exposed from his armour,   
“He’s still breathing, looks like you just knocked him out but he’s really gonna have a headache when he wakes up” she said examining him closely, she couldn’t see any blood but he did have a lump on the back of his head where it had hit the metal.   
“Let’s take him upstairs I’ve got some medical stuff up there we can bandage his head up there” Missy said, Macha hissed in caution and Missy shot her a glance,   
“We hurt him, he didn’t know you were friendly, all he saw was something coming down from the ceiling to attack us and to be fair you do look pretty scary at first, he even tried to protect me when he pushed me behind him away from you. So we have to help him, if he survived the monsters down there then he must be tough, we could use his help and maybe he could use ours, but we have to show him that we’re friendly and don’t mean him any harm, then he won’t attack us, so that means best behaviour ok?” she said, Macha sighed heavily but she nodded slowly, but there was definitely something strange about this human, his aura felt almost familiar to her and that was peeking her curiosity,   
“Take his weapons away” Macha said, Missy nodded,  
“Good idea” she said and she quickly pulled what looked like a pistol from a holster on his leg and went to retrieve his rifle, “Wow this is a lot heavier than it looks” she said as she picked up the rifle but she could barely lift it properly, instead she ended up having to use it’s sling to hold it on her back, meanwhile Macha scooped up the unconscious human and cradled him in her arms, now she got her first good look at his face and she got a sudden rush through her, this surprised her greatly, there was only one other human that had ever caused that.  
Back upstairs in Missy’s hive Macha set the human down in the nest, Missy set about putting lotions and creams on his head before wrapping it in what looked like white cloths, Macha noticed how peaceful he looked as he slept, she hovered over Missy’s shoulder curiously as she watched her, she had to admit that the human had a very aesthetically pleasing face much like Tyler had, it was strange it was like certain humans had features that reflected their personalities, Tyler’s had reflected his kindness and his loving nature, while on the other end of the spectrum the man who she’d killed who had imprisoned and experimented on her had rather twisted features, this human called Reaper had very similar features to Tyler in a lot of ways, his face looked soft and kind but there was quite a few scars visible, especially one rather mean one that ran straight through his right eye that gave him a much harder edge then her Tyler.   
But there was definitely something very different about him from other humans, his aura seemed to glow vibrantly even though he was out cold, as she watched closely his eyes snapped open causing her to recoil in shock, instantly they locked on to her and he scrambled backwards and began to pat himself obviously looking for his missing weapons, instantly Missy was there, “It’s ok, it’s ok she won’t hurt you” she said in a surprisingly soothing voice for one so young, Reaper’s eyes flicked from Macha to Missy and back, Macha decided to follow Missy’s lead and lowered herself to ground level before sitting down and making a show of being non-threatening, now the human looked seriously confused,   
“See? She doesn’t want to hurt you, she only hit you because she thought you were attacking me” Missy said, now Reaper looked at her with a look of serious concern and confusion plastered all over his face,   
“You do know she’s a Xenomorph queen right?” he said slowly, Missy looked at Macha almost accusingly,   
“Well I knew she was a Xenomorph, but she never told me she was royalty” she said in an accusing voice, Macha sighed guiltily, Reaper watched this with a raised eyebrow,   
“Well this is gonna get interesting” he said and Missy turned to him with her award winning smile back in place again,   
“Yup” she said.


	8. Building Bridges

Chapter 8: Building Bridges.  
A can bounced down the hallway causing an echo as it span and pinged off the drab grey coloured concrete walls.   
Ice turned and looked at Picasso accusingly, he just shrugged guiltily. “Sorry it’s kinda hard to see under this thing sometimes” he said gesturing up with his heavily modified M56 Smartgun.   
This particular Smartgun had been through Tank’s hands and had been rather up heavily modified, it was made of much lighter materials to make it easier to handle in tight places and also to carry over long distances. Next up was the tracking systems, he had modified them by combining them with the same system used by Yaujta hunting masks and plasma castors, so now instead of just firing wherever the user was looking it could be used to lock onto targets for sustained fire, this meant the user wore a modified head piece attached to their helmet which displayed a heads up display into their visor and projected the laser which it used to lock onto targets, with a bit of Tank flair he had somehow managed to make it smart enough to now also be able to track multiple targets at once and also prioritize them based of distance and threat analysis, so for example if you had a heavily armed sniper two hundred meters from you and a charging Xeno one hundred from you it would prioritize the sniper and fire a burst to make them get their head down before switching to the Xeno.  
Tank’s last trick with this particular gun was its real party piece, Tank called it TAA or Target Adjusting Ammo. This stuff was just as smart as the gun and worked perfectly in conjunction with the gun’s sensors, it adjusted itself for the particular target that the user was firing at, for example if you were firing at a Xeno it would adjust the ammo to penetrate the target’s thick skin and then explode inside the target before the acid had chance to dissolve it, but if you were firing at a soft unarmoured human it would drop the projectile charge to slow the round down and adjust the tip not to fully explode but rather to pop open and expand, so that it did not punch straight through but stayed inside the target mushrooming out to do maximum damage.  
The heads up display was also fitted with a mini movement tracker like the type that the Colonial Marines used but small enough to clip to the user’s helmet and display the results in the user’s visor.  
But despite all of Tank’s modifications the gun was still a bit of a beast to wield, big and cumbersome to hold even with the mechanical belt helping you to swing it around, this was what was hindering Picasso as he found it difficult to see his feet under it.  
Ice just shook her head as she turned back to the corridor in front of her, this hospital was very fucking creepy and she really didn’t like it here, the lobby and the corridors they’d encountered upon entering it had looked like a tornado had swept through them. There was stuff strewn in every direction, seats and desks over turned and thrown around, over turned wheel chairs and gurneys had also been quite the flavour in the main lobby. What had disturbed her the most about them was the fact that every single one of them had been blood stained, so they hadn’t been just stored there, they’d been occupied when whatever blitzed through here came through.  
As they’d moved deeper into the hospital they’d also begun to notice makeshift barricades in various corridors and against doors, obviously doctors and nurses and probably patients had tried to seal themselves off from whatever it was that had swept through here, the depressing thing for Ice was that pretty much every single one of them had been breached.  
As they moved into a large X Junction Ice swung her modified pulse rifle from corridor to corridor in succession checking that it was clear, this version of the M41 Pulse rifle had also been through Tank’s hands and he’d named it, the M41T.  
It had been lightened the same way as Picasso’s Smartgun, it also now supported a reinforced barrel made from precision milled Tritanium that was fitted with an integrated life lasting suppressor, this made the weapon much quieter than the standard model especially when combined with the subsonic ammo that he’d come up with for it.  
Ice always chose to carry a mixture of ammo for it so she’d always have a good balance for whatever their engagements threw at them. On this trip she was carrying 10x24mm caseless explosive tipped rounds and 10x24mm subsonic hollow points, these were stored in custom drum magazines that Tank had created for the gun, these held two hundred rounds per drum allowing the user to stay in the fight longer before swapping.  
The gun also supported both a small holo sight and a laser pointer on its rails to aid its accuracy, he’d also rigged the gun’s fire selector to include single shots so that it could be used to its maximum accuracy.   
Tank had also rejigged the under-barrel pump action grenade launcher with a much smoother action and when combined with his own brand of airburst frag or incendiary grenades this made it particularly deadly to crowds.  
Ice looked up at the signs in the corridors, to their left was X ray and the MRI departments, to their right was surgery and the intensive care units, directly ahead of them led to the labs and to the wards.  
Glancing over her shoulder she saw Picasso scanning the area with his large Smartgun and his sensors, “The labs would be our best option, if they had any time before the worst of this hit then there’d be samples and possibly specimens there for us to analyse” she said, Picasso nodded,   
“Alright lead the way Doc this is your game field not mine” he said, she nodded and they headed ahead down the corridor that led towards the labs.  
As they walked she began to notice even more breached barricades in the smaller branching corridors.   
“Hold up” Picasso suddenly hissed from behind her, Ice instantly froze and glanced over her shoulder at him, he was moving his Smartgun around as if trying to get a fix on something,   
“I got movement, fifty meters four signals” he said in a whisper and pointing in the direction his motion tracker had got it’s ping from, Ice nodded and brought her weapon into the aim in the direction that Picasso had indicated.  
Both of them moved slowly down the corridor with Picasso counting down the distance between them and the four pings on the motion tracker, as they drew closer Ice started to hear an odd scraping noise, she held up her balled fist and Picasso stopped, she motioned to her head to show that she heard something and a return nod from him indicated that he’d heard it too, the pair of them began to move again but even slower than before both being extra careful of their footing with all the loose items and debris littering the floor, this was extra difficult for Picasso but he did his best.   
A small corridor leading off the main one seemed to be where the pings were coming from and as it appeared Picasso signalled Ice that’s where the pings were, she nodded and moved off to his left as they both moved to round the corner.  
Stepping around the corner both of them instantly saw what had tripped the motion tracker, there were three humans and a male Yaujta standing in the corridor, they were stood at a closed door and from the massive scratch marks and what appeared to me teeth marks that Ice’s night vision systems picked up they had been trying to get through it for quite a while.  
The four of them didn’t even seem to notice the two newcomers. Ice thought about shouting a challenge, well that was until she noticed the huge growths sticking up out of the back of the Yaujta male. It looked like he had some form of coral shards sticking up out of his back and his shoulders. The night vision screwed her ability to identify colours as everything just looked like it was a million different shades of grey. Ice also noticed the same growths sticking up out of various parts of the three humans bodies as well, plus the fact that the one nearest them seemed to be missing his left arm at the elbow didn’t help.  
All four of them were wearing hospital lab coats which indicated that they were medical staff, either doctors or lab techs.   
It was at this point that the Yaujta noticed the two newcomers, he turned slowly at first but them when he was able to see them with the one good eye that he still had as his other was completely encased in one of those coral growths, he straightaway let loose a blood curdling roar, only two of his mandibles flared as he did and the other two just kinda twitched as the skin between them seemed to be fused into the coral mass on the side of his face.  
Without hesitation Ice levelled her M41T on him and as the laser mark fell on him she put three rounds into his chest. As they were in close confines and she figured they’d be facing unarmoured targets, her gun was loaded with the hollow point rounds, the M41T made a rapid series of dull thuds as it fired off the three rounds in rapid succession. All three found their mark and caused the male Yaujta to stagger backwards but he didn’t fall, glowing blood sprayed out from the impact sites in his chest and caused a fine glowing mist to spring up in front of him. But instead of stopping him all it did was seem to piss him off as he let loose another roar, but this one did sound kinda rattled as he had what would be three sucking chest wounds.  
As one the three humans with him turned towards the two of them and now Ice could see the extent of the damage to their bodies as well. The fact that one of them was still up and mobile was nothing short of a miracle, her body was peppered with a verity of gunshot wounds, her chest was peppered with holes and most of her stomach had been blown away with what was obviously a shotgun hit at close range.  
Ice’s eyes widened at the sight of the young woman with her intestines hanging down around her knees like a skipping rope and a gigantic hole in her abdomen, she glanced at a Picasso and she could see the shock painted in his eyes as well through his visor, “Weapons free!!” she yelled just as the four of them headed straight for them.  
Picasso’s Smartgun roared as he opened up on them, fortunately Tank had fitted the end of the barrel with a flash suppressor to eliminate the muzzle flash so that their night vision wouldn’t be affected when used in dark places and to make them harder to target.   
The smart targeting picked the heavily injured woman as she was the closest to him and the large rounds from his opening burst tore her upper chest to pieces and slammed her down onto her back, but to their utter shock no sooner had she hit the floor than she was scrambling to try and get back to her feet. “No fucking way! That’s not fucking possible!!” Ice yelled as she sent yet another burst into the chest of the Yaujta opening up even more of his chest, but it didn’t stop him or even slow him down he just kept coming.  
The second burst from Picasso’s Smartgun hit the second human and opened a zipper of hits right up his chest with the final round slamming into his face hitting him right between the eyes. The large round blew the back of the male’s skull out and the vacuum pressure that was in his head nearly collapsed it while also causing his one good eye to pop out of its socket, the other one was encased in coral.  
The male fell backwards onto his back and took out the legs of the Yaujta who got tangled up in the sprawling male as he fell causing him to trip and fall on his face. Picasso noticed that this human didn’t try and get back up, turning to Ice he yelled, “Go for headshots!”.  
Ice nodded and levelled her M41T on the centre of the Yaujta’s face and he tried to get up while looking like he was doing some sort of push up while using the human as a bench to rest his feet on. Her three round burst caved his face pretty much in on itself and his body crashed back down to the floor with a heavy thud, this time he did not try to get back up.  
The final two that were left standing fell with a burst from each weapon to each of their heads slamming them down onto their backs and sending them skittering backwards.   
“Tangos neutralised” Picasso said as he tapped the Yaujta male’s corpse with his armoured foot, he turned to look at Ice who was already crouched down next to the body of the young woman whose body had nearly been turned inside out by gunshots.  
“We need to get these bodies to an autopsy room, I need to run some tests.” She said,  
“Are you sure that’s wise? There’s bound to be more of those fuckers heading our way now” Picasso said, Ice nodded her agreement at this,   
“Yeah I know, but we still need to know what the fuck we’re up against here” she said.  
A small sound from the door caught Picasso’s attention and he immediately snapped his Smartgun up into the aim levelling it on the door, which to his utter amazement now stood open and in the doorway stood a young Scalathor woman.  
Picasso nearly opened fire on her, if it wasn’t for the fact that she immediately held her hands up in front of her protectively he would have. He body language instantly told him that she wasn’t infected.   
“Please don’t shoot!!” the young woman exclaimed as she saw Picasso levelling his weapon on her, at the sound of a voice Ice snapped up from inspecting the bodies and levelled her weapon on the newcomer.  
“Identify yourself!” Ice snapped keeping her weapon trained on her, treatment like this always seemed harsh and unnecessary to civilians who didn’t understand how the military mind works, it’s all about threat analysis and situation control and sometimes the only way to stop civilians and sometimes yourself from panicking and running around was to show a measure of authority and control.  
From the white tone of her skin Ice could tell that the young reptilian woman was scared out of her mind, she also looked exhausted.  
“I-I-I-I-I’m Zachee Twist Horn, I work here or at least I did” she said in a soft but scared sounding voice,   
“Doctor?” Picasso asked, her eyes flicked from Ice to him, in his opinion she was rather a pretty young woman, she was about 5’2 with a long curved horn in the centre of her short feminine snout that like her name depicted twisted at the end like a corkscrew.  
She kind of remained Picasso of the pictures of dragons that he used to love looking at when he was a kid, in fact she kinda reminded him of the dragon he had tattooed across the back of his shoulders and onto his chest, it was probably the small rows of little horns that ran along the sides of her snout and over the top of her head, but to be fair she was a lot prettier and a lot more feminine than the pictures he’d seen.  
“Y-Y-Y-Yes” Zachee stammered, Ice and Picasso glanced at each other and shared a slight almost unperceivable nod, then as one they both lowered their weapons and stood up straight to face Zachee.  
“A-A-A-Are you the rescue team?” Zachee asked still stammering in fear, Ice glanced at Picasso and he nodded, this was his area of expertise being the team’s interrogation specialist.  
“That’s right. You can call me Picasso and this is my colleague Ice” He said in a very soft and controlled voice as he took a step towards the young woman, he could now see past her and into the room in which she’d been hiding, it appeared to be a laboratory of some kind. He could see a few work stations with magnifiers and imaging equipment as well as sample cabinets, he couldn’t see any others in the room and his motion tracker only showed her signal.  
“Oh thank the Gods!!” Zachee said in a voice that sounded like it was full of relief and at the same time sounded like it was about to crack and explode with emotion, Picasso knew that he’d have to keep her stable while he asked her a few questions, so pushing his Smartgun’s barrel upwards for the belt harness to hold he locked it in the upwards position so that his hands were now free.   
Slowly he placed an armoured hand on her shoulder, instantly she flinched at his touch and she looked up at his visor hidden face, he guessed that without night vision she wouldn’t be able to see anything except his helmet so in order to calm her nerves he reached up and pressed a small switch on the back of the helmet which caused the internal lights to bathe his face in soft blue light enabling her to see him.  
As soon as she saw his face something inside Zachee snapped and in a flash she threw her arms around Picasso’s torso and began to sob against his armoured chest, “Thank you, thank you” she began to say over and over again as she clung to his chest, slowly he placed a hand on the back of her scaled head and tried to soothe her.  
“Shhhh now it’s ok now” he said in a soft voice. Looking over her head at Ice he motioned with his head for her to check the lab that Zachee had been hiding in. Ice nodded and slowly moved past the pair and into the room.   
It was a rather advanced lab for performing toxicology screening and blood work, there were four separate lab stations with various equipment designed to filter blood and fluids and then to inspect them, things like high precision microscopes and other scanning equipment littered the stations.   
The room was pretty much dark except for a small amount of light being given off by what appeared to be some sort of bio luminescent fungi that was stored in jars that Zachee had placed around a small couch that she appeared to have been using as a bed.  
It was kinda obvious that Zachee had been in here quite a while by all the wrappers and other trash that was piled up near a totally buried bin in the corner of the room, Ice was just glad that the lab had its own toilet facilities or she guessed she’d have been very glad of her helmet.  
Using the team’s hand signals Ice motioned to Picasso that the room was clear and safe, he nodded a response and then made a signal to her for her to call it in before turning his attention back to the still sobbing young female Picasso gently lifted her chin so that she was looking right at his face. “I need to ask you some questions Zachee, we need to know what happened here and what we can do to help” he said in his soft voice,   
“Help!? There is no help now, all we can do is get the fuck out of here before more of them come, more of them always come” Zachee said in a fearful voice, as she spoke he heard another voice over his comms in his helmet.  
“Ice to all call signs, Ice to all call signs, we have a survivor repeat we have secured a survivor, will continue to search the hospital for anything else useful, have also taken down four X tangos, repeat four X tangos neutralised, if encountered use only headshots to engage as body and limb shots are pointless, repeat engage with headshots only, over” Ice said through the team comms.  
The response was almost instant, “This is Inferno confirming info received and understood, continue your search and keep us updated with anything you find” she said, there was a fair bit of static on her line but Ice was able to understand what she’d said thanks to her gruff voice cutting through the static, Spike had designed their personal comm systems and they had not only a massive range but huge depth so that they could function even when the operator was underground or in a fortified building, so if there was static on the line that meant that Inferno was somewhere shielded and the signal was having trouble penetrating.  
A second voice came over the comms, “This is Tank confirming info received and understood and just in time girly, I think we’re about to need it, we’ve just reached the shuttle station and it’s pretty heavily fortified, we’re gonna see if Moodstone can work her black magic and get us inside, if we’re successful we’ll see what we can turn up and if possible turn this place into a staging area, over” Tanks voice said over a much clearer line.  
“Roger that, keep us in the loop on any progress and watch your back, treat any civilian contact as hostile until confirmed that they are uninfected” Inferno’s voice said,  
“Roger that” came the various replies including Ice’s.  
Looking from Zachee to Ice the two shared a small nod, Picasso was about to resume his questioning of the frightened young woman when a metallic clang echoed down the corridor from his right, instantly he released her and swung his weapon down into the firing position and turned his visor lights off. As he looked down the long corridor he couldn’t see a single thing till what appeared a can slowly rolled from the left of the corridor to the right before hitting the wall with a metallic thud. Taking slow controlled breaths Picasso scanned the corridor with his Smartgun but there was nothing in sight and his motion tracker wasn’t showing anything, well not at first anyway, first one bleep, then two, then ten.  
“Contacts! We gotta move now!!” Picasso roared to Ice who without hesitation appeared behind Zachee and grabbed her before she could retreat back into the room,   
“Go I got you covered” he said as she pushed past him with the protesting Scalathor, walking backwards he kept his Smartgun in the aim down the corridor as the markers got closer, they were currently at forty meters and closing.  
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000  
Tank looked at the scene of utter chaos that surrounded the shuttle station, there were barricades and mesh wire barriers strewn everywhere, in among them were what appeared to military vehicles like hover hummers and two massive Challenger 10 main battle tanks, all of them were totally abandoned.   
It looked like they’d set up some sort of checkpoint here, probably in some attempt to begin an evacuation, an evacuation that for whatever reason never happened.  
One of the first things he noticed were the huge holes in the tarmac and cement leading up to the shuttle station carpark, it looked like heavy weapons fire and judging by the massive blood stains and bits of tissue everywhere most of the fire had been fairly accurate.  
But the thing that was puzzling him the most was where were the bodies? All those holes and all that blood and there was not a single body in sight in any direction.   
“Sure was a hell of a shit storm came this way” he said as he kneeled down to inspect a rather large scorch mark that was obviously made by a Yaujta plasma caster.   
“Given that I can’t see a single body anywhere I’m suddenly not liking the odds here very much” Moodstone said sweeping her weapon across the empty carpark as she did she looked up at Whisper who was also inspecting a hole apparently made by heavy weapons fire, she simply glanced up at her and nodded her agreement.  
“Well we can’t hang about here all fucking day, let’s get a move on hens and see what we can do with that big arse building over there” Tank said pointing at the main shuttle station building, both Moodstone and Whisper glanced at each other before they looked back at him and nodded following his lead towards the main building.  
The main building was a huge retro styled affair, it reminded Tank of the old Grand Central train station on Earth, but on a much older scale and he could also see a lot of artistic licence from the architect in the form of huge brick archways that lines the entire outer wall that circled the building. A large black granite staircase led them directly up to the main doors, where a huge shutter had been closed in front of the doors themselves to prevent entry.  
Tank stood looking at the massively dented silver coloured shutter, but it wasn’t the dents that he was paying attention to, it was the collection of bloody handprints that littered it.  
“Think you can crack it open lassie?” Tank asked looking at Moodstone, she grinned at him through her helmet,   
“Is that a trick question lover?” she asked causing Tank to return her grin inside his helmet, before he met this wondrous woman he’d have never even imagined looking at another species the way he looked at her. She’d turned his entire perception of the universe upside down and inside out the second she’d stepped into his life, as he turned to help Whisper keep watch while she broke out her plasma cutting torch from her pack, he remembered the very first time he’d set eyes on her.  
The team was in the process of being assembled by the Queen Bee and he was stood in the meeting room of the Ghost’s Shadow, he’d been talking to the team’s Sargent a kinda normal looking guy whose code name was Reaper while he looked around as each of the team was brought in one at a time and introduced.   
Now he’d never met any of these guys before today and he had to say he really wasn’t that impressed by any of them and he’d certainly not heard of any of them before, well that was all except for Reaper.   
He’d heard of this guy before and although he wasn’t exactly much to look at, his reputation alone was enough to give entire armies the willies. Before he’d been recruited by the Spirit’s he was some kind of floating assassin out in the outer rim, but now while assassins were ten a penny out here on the frontier, this guy was different.  
Instead of your everyday petty thug this guy specialised in going after the slaving rings and pirate crews that operated out here, a story sprung to mind of a pirate cruiser that had attacked a colonist ship killing most of the crew and taking the passengers as slaves.  
Well when the Colonial Marines had been drafted in to find and take them out they’d found that someone had beaten them to it.   
They found the ship adrift inside an asteroid belt and when they boarded it they’d found every single one of the crew dead, but there was no evidence of a struggle or even a battle. Every one of them had been killed execution style, either with a shot to the back of the head or with their throats cut some times in groups of three or four and the slaves were simply gone.  
They all showed up on a Wayland Yutani run deep space station which acted like a refuelling and R&R station for those going to the frontier worlds, every one of them told the same story of a guy dressed all in black who’s face you couldn’t see for his large hood who moved like a ghost and killed without mercy, some of them had watched him from their cages as he’d moved up on the totally unsuspecting crew and just cut their throats or simply shot them in the back of the head and that was only one of the stories accredited to him, there were hundreds of tales just like it, so while Tank wasn’t impressed with the look of the man he was more than smart enough to know to respect him, the man was beyond dangerous but he was also surprisingly pleasant and friendly to talk to.  
It was at that point that she walked in, Queen Bee had introduced her as Moodstone and had started listing off her specialist skills and credits that explained her position in the team, but while the Queen Bee had been speaking Gregor had not heard a word she’d said, his mind had been totally captivated by the totally radiant creature that was stood before him and what made his heart nearly leave his chest is the fact she was staring right at him and smiling broadly, it was so incredible that Gregor wouldn’t have been surprised if one of those little cherub fuckers showed up and shot him with an arrow, thought if he did he’d still have to punch the little fucker through a bulkhead, principle and all that, couldn’t have the team thinking he was a weak little wee bern.  
“I got it! We’re in” Moodstone’s voice snapped him out of his happy memory, he turned and saw that she’d managed to cut through all the securing bolts that held the shutter down, now it should be free moving on its mountings, she turned to look at him over her shoulder,   
“You’re up my love” she said with a smile, moving Bertha onto her sling Gregor moved to the shutter and jammed both his shovel like hands under it before with a gargantuan effort lifted the heavy metal shutter up high enough for them all to crawl under.  
The shutter made a huge crash as Tank let it fall to the ground, it seemed to echo around the large pitch black entrance hall they’d found themselves in. “Everyone switch to night vision” he said upon seeing how dark it was, as they were switching over something lit up in his Hud.   
“Motion tracker’s getting a signal, sixty meters that way” he hissed pointing his finger into the dark hallway, each of them brought their weapon up into the aim and started scanning their arcs,   
“I’m on point, Moodstone you in the middle and Whisper cover our rears” Gregor and the others nodded while moving into position, slowly they began to move down the hallway in a staggered line constantly sweeping with their weapons as they moved.  
As they moved closer more signals started popping up on Gregor’s motion tracker, he stopped the team with a hand signal, “I got multiple signals here, counting ten signals so far” he said, the other two nodded and slowly they moved off again now being even more cautious as they moved down the large marble hallway.   
At the end of the hallways was two sets of large wooden double doors, the left set had a padlock and chain wrapped around the handles, “Guess we’re going right” Tank said pointing to the doors, Moodstone and Whisper nodded and moved into position on either side of the doors while he got into position directly in front of them.  
Whisper who was the closest to the handle counted down from three on her hand till it hit zero and both her and Moodstone hit the door handles at the same time and the doors creaked loudly inwards with the three of them following them.  
The door led into a massive waiting room with lots of benches and seating in the middle of the room, the entire outer walls were full of shops and what looked like check in desks. The whole place looked like it had been heavily vandalised as cases and bins and various other articles were strewn all over the floor in every direction.  
All three of them scanned their arcs with their weapons suddenly Whisper held her hand up and pointed down her gun barrel towards a set of check in desks over to the left side.   
She was holding a cousin of Reaper’s PIMP gun called the AMPIP or Anti Material Plasma Infused Projector. It was a dedicated sniper version of the PIMP gun that Reaper carried, it had been built specially with Whisper’s talents in mind.   
Using this weapon, she currently held the longest shot and kill record, having hit and killed an enemy combatant at nearly four miles away with a single cold bore shot.  
The weapon was chambered to fire plasma projectiles in a 20mm slug at insane velocity, upon impact the rounds drilled into their targets before releasing all that charged up plasma energy with an explosive burst that tended to vaporise the target’s internal organs leaving them a pretty much hollow shell made of toasted skin.  
Both Moodstone and Tank followed her sightline and spotted what she was looking at, over by the check in desk there appeared to be someone stood leaning on the desk as if they were filling out a boarding card.  
Tank motioned for Moodstone to come with him but for Whisper to stay where she was and provide cover if necessary, both nodded and moved into position, Whisper moved to a bench and knelt down flicking down the AMPIP’s barrel legs as she did.   
Moodstone moved off to Gregor’s right and slowly the pair of them approached the figure stood by the desk, both of them were careful as they approached making as little noise as possible while trying to avoid debris. Once they were close enough Gregor held up hand and motioned for Moodstone to move further right, she nodded and circled around the figure.  
“Hey fella, you waiting for a flight or what?” Gregor yelled to the figure he had now identified as a human male, the guy slowly turned towards him as if every movement was a struggle, each movement seemed to be really twitchy and non-fluid, as he turned to face him Gregor’s eyes widened, half of the guy’s face appeared to be just skull.  
Without warning the guy who was dressed in what looked like an expensive looking black business suit let loose a blood curdling screech and flew straight at Gregor with his arms outstretched. Before he’d gone three steps there was a flash over Gregor’s shoulder and the male’s head snapped backwards, his eye sockets and mouth seemed to pour a blue and pink light out of them along with what looked like wispy steam for a second before he collapsed forwards onto his knees and finally onto his face.  
As he fell Tank noticed the large third eye socket that had appeared in the centre of his forehead and he knew instantly that Whisper had taken the shot, he gave her a quick thumbs up to indicate that he was ok, it was scary how accurate that girl was sometimes, that round had passed so close to his own head that he had a vague white trail dissipating next to his face.  
“So this is what they were talking about by biohazard” Moodstone said as she approached the now dead male, Tank joined her and now getting a good look at the male his jaw dropped open,   
“How the flying fuck was he even still able to be walking around like this?” he said more to himself than directing the question at either of the girls.  
The male was in pretty bad shape, not only was half of his face missing, but one of his legs had a compound fracture in his shin and the bone was stuck out of the side of his leg, three of his ribs appeared to be exposed by what must have been a high velocity hit to the chest. His left arm appeared to have been shattered at the shoulder by a second hit but somehow he was still able to raise it.  
As both he and Moodstone were examining the body Whisper came to join them, looking down at the body she seemed concerned, “He had no heart beat” she said flatly,   
“I’m not surprised hen, you just vaporised his brains and probably everything else in there” Tank said,   
“No I mean before I took the shot, I tried to use the heartbeat tracker on my scope and it picked up nothing” she said, Tank and Moodstone glanced at each other then back at the body laid on the floor before them,   
“Malfunction?” Moodstone voiced, Whisper shook her head,   
“I could see both of your hearts beating no problems, but nothing from him” she said gesturing with her gun barrel at the body laid on the floor, again both Tank and Moodstone looked at each other but before anyone could say anything there was an ear-splitting screech was heard from off to the group’s left.  
As one the three of them all turned and swung their weapons up into the aim, suddenly Tank’s motion tracker lit up like a Christmas tree, “Multiple contacts heading right for us, distance fifty meters, count many” he said as the spots kept appearing, in fact there were so many of them that one entire side of the radar style screen had turned completely white,   
“Fuck there’s way too many of them, come on we gotta go!!” Moodstone yelled as she got a distant glimpse of the massive crowd heading from them out of the gloom, but as they all turned to go back the way they’d come they noticed that more of them were coming down an escalator that led directly to the ground next to the doors.  
“That way!” Whisper said pointing towards the ticket desks to the right, the three of them set off at a run, they could now hear the running feet of the crowd chasing them though how they knew where they were in the total pitch black was beyond any of them.  
Behind them they heard a massive crash as the check in booths were destroyed by the sheer weight of the crowd that crashed into them, this simply gave them even more motivation to break into a full on sprint but as they glanced left and right there seemed to be more and more of them pouring out of nowhere on all sides of them and joining in the pursuit.  
“Where the fuck are they all coming from and how the fuck did we miss them all!?” Moodstone yelled between pants of breath,   
“Who fucking cares lassie just fucking keep that sweet tail of yours moving!!” Tank yelled from behind her, suddenly off to their right a red light flashed out of the inky blackness and the three of them heard a distant voice yelling,   
“Over here!! Over here quickly!!!” the voice yelled and the three of them saw a figure dancing around waving what appeared to be a red light flare, as one the three of them changed direction mid sprint and accelerated towards the figure.  
The figure who seemed to be wearing some sort of black armour was stood next to what looked like a blast door that had been jacked up, “In here!!!” the figure yelled pointing at the door and the three of them didn’t need to be told twice, ducking as they ran the three of them sprinted past the figure and under the massive blast door.  
As soon as they were clear the figure ducked under the door and kicked the jack away causing it to slam down with enough force to shake the entire room, this was swiftly followed by the horrendous sound of the huge crowd that was pursuing them simply slamming full tilt into the hardened metal with enough force to actually shake it in its foundations.  
“I tell you what you sure timed that entrance of yours laddie” Tank said to the armoured figure between heavy pants as he rested his upper body on his legs while bending double,   
“Agreed very well timed” Moodstone panted,   
“Sorry I’d have tried to intervene sooner but to be fair I wasn’t exactly expecting to see a Spirit team sniffing around here” the armoured figure said standing a few feet off to their left, that instantly put all three of them on alert and the three of them stood up straight their hands reaching down to their weapons.   
“Who the devil are ye laddie that you know who we are?” Tank said the gruffness instantly returning to his voice along with a very hard edge, very few knew of the existence of Spirit teams, the figure held his open hands out to his sides to show that he wasn’t holding a weapon,   
“Sorry let me introduce myself” he said and with both hands he reached up and released his helmet from his head revealing the face of a young Yaujta male, but there was something very off about him, it took Tank a second or two to realise that instead of regular dreadlocks he seemed to have actual hair,   
“My name’s T’sall Jack of the proud clan Mason, Agent first class of the Guardian Corps” the young male Yaujta said drawing his Mandibles up into a smile as he looked at the three now very confused Spirits in front of him.


	9. Frenemies

“Wait. Let me get this straight, SHE saved you!?” Reaper exclaimed pointing at Macha as if he was accusing her of something heinous, the young Xenomorph queen was now pacing around the nest area her anger obvious for everyone to see.  
Missy had been explaining how the two of them met to the human who called himself Reaper, but for some reason he just didn’t seem to get it, this was the third time that Missy had told him how she’d saved her back in the alleyway and he still didn’t seem to believe her.  
“He’s really starting to test my patience now!!” Macha hissed, Missy glanced at her as she paced back and forth, her tail was twitching angrily at the silent accusations that this human seemed to be levying her way. Reaper looked right at her, but she didn’t see fear in those bright ice blue eyes of his, or anger either come to think of it, instead there was something very different lurking there shrouded in deep intelligence and obvious cunning and it was driving her nuts trying to figure out what it was.  
She’d even tried diving into his mind to see if she could pull out any info that way, but his mental fortitude was absolutely incredible, while his aura painted one picture of someone with an open mind to the world, his actual mind was like a steel trap. It was like someone had placed his brain in a Tritanium box locked it up tight and pitched the fucker into the ocean.  
But there was one emotion that had wormed it’s way out of that closely guarded mind of his, curiosity and it seemed to be aimed at her, but if he was curious of her why the hell was he being so hostile towards her, was he testing her?   
Then it was like someone had switched a lightbulb on above Macha’s head and instantly she understood, he WAS testing her, he was searching for chinks in her armour, he was playing dumb and intentionally trying to make her mad to see what she would do and how she’d react to it.  
Suddenly she understood him a little better and this realisation made her smile, this human was cunning, very cunning.   
But now she had the upper hand on him here as she could now see what he was trying to do, he was sizing her up and looking for weaknesses in the hope that he could set her off and prove his point of how dangerous she was, to be fair this very point did make her blood boil a little, she’d done nothing to him, well other than slam him into a machine downstairs, but to be fair he’d deserved that for shoving Missy over like that.  
She was half tempted to show him how dangerous she really could be if she wanted, but she knew that doing so would simply prove him right and she was determined that wasn’t going to happen, she was going to show him that Xeno’s weren’t just the killing machines that he seemed to think they were, so with that in mind she repressed her temper and calmed herself. As soon as her stance and demeanour changed she became aware of the human’s eyes on her again, that look was back now as was the curiosity.  
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No matter what he said or what he tried Reaper just couldn’t seem to convince the young girl of just how dangerous her ‘friend’ was. He’d figured out early on that she could understand every word he was saying and had decided rather than just explain it to her he’d demonstrate it, so when he’d became aware of the Xeno’s obvious pride in the fact that she’d saved and defended the young girl from whatever the hell was out there he’d pretended not to believe her.  
For a little while this had worked and the Xeno queen that Missy referred to as Macha had begun angrily pacing the landing, he had to admit there was something rather amusing about a mighty Xeno queen becoming stroppy over the fact that someone didn’t believe her story, though he was also acutely aware of the danger of the game that he was playing here and without his weapons he was pretty much defenceless against her if she did decide to flip out on him.  
As he studied her he had to admit that she was a rather magnificent specimen of her species, she stood about ten feet tall with massive powerful and very sleek looking legs leading down into wide and clawed feet that were keeping her upright. Her arms were shorter than those of a normal queen but they were much thicker in the muscle department, in fact Aiden noticed that she looked pretty ripped with bulging biceps when she crossed her arms over her chest as she stropped about him apparently not believing her.   
The next thing he noticed was that she seemed to be missing the smaller arms on her chest that every other queen he’d ever seen had, instead she seemed to have a curved carapace that almost looked like a breast plate that was protecting swells on her chest, she also seemed to have what looked like a six pack of abdominal muscles leading down into quite wide and flared hips.  
But the two main things that gave away her difference from another queen of her species were the fact that her head while it had the long wide crest that signified a queen was decorated with long dreadlock like appendages that came halfway down her back. The other was that fact that she had a full set of Yaujta mandibles on her face.  
This queen that Missy called Macha had obviously been born of a Yaujta host and if had affected her biology, he had heard of this particular blend but this was the first time he’d ever seen one up close and she looked every bit as fearsome as the stories had led him to believe. But he did have to admit that as dangerous and alien as she was to his human eyes there was a definite magnificence to her, the way she stood tall and proud, the way she moved had an almost feminine grace to it, he noticed that she even almost seemed to roll her hips slightly when she walked which caused her long and fierce looking tail to sway from side to side.  
But while he could admire her alien beauty and the ruthless efficiency of her body he knew first and second hand how dangerous her species was, though he had to admit this was the longest he’d ever spent in the company of one without weapons being drawn and discharged, though he really didn’t have his to draw at the moment but still.  
The major point that confused him was why she was acting this way, never had he either seen or ever heard of one of the Xeno’s ever showing caring or compassion for another race, but it was obvious to his eyes that she was fiercely protective of the young girl, her body language simply screamed ‘Fuck with her and you fuck with me’ at him every time he even looked at Missy, he’d had a sneaky suspicion as to why she was protective of her but this had been proven false when he’d managed to slip his scanner out of his armour bandolier without them noticing and scan the young girl, she wasn’t carrying an embryo so why was she so protective of her and why wasn’t she simply attacking them? These were questions he simply had to answer.  
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“It’s no good Macha I don’t think he believes me when I say that you saved me from the crazies” Missy said as they moved away from the human in her bed and over to the other side of the landing,   
“I think he believes you but he’s playing dumb” Macha replied looking at the forlorn looking little girl who now looked up at her curiously,   
“Playing dumb? Why would he be playing dumb?” she asked.  
“He’s trying to get me angry so that I flip out and prove what he’s saying when he says that I’m dangerous” she said,   
“But you’re obviously dangerous I mean look at you” Missy said, this response caught Macha by surprise and it hurt her,   
“W-W-What do you mean?” she stammered as the little girl’s comment hit her heart like a spear tipped tail,   
“I didn’t mean to offend you, but you look mean but in a good way” Missy said noticing her friends hurt voice,   
“How does one look mean in a good way?” Mach asked curiously,   
“Well look at you, you’re huge and you got more muscles in places than I have places, you look like you could tear crazies in half all day long for a laugh. Then there’s that awesome looking tail of yours that looks like I could make a crazy kebab without even trying and with those legs you look like you could jump a whole building, so what I mean is you look awesome enough that no-one in their right mind would want to take you on and mess with you” Missy said smiling up at her friend.  
Missy’s kind words made Macha smile and it made her stand tall rising up to her whole height and puffing her chest out a little as they gave her a much needed ego boost, that’s when she became aware of the human watching her curiously,   
“Well no-one except for him” she said jerking her head in the direction of the human,  
“Well I woulda said he was just dumb but I don’t think so somehow” Missy said scratching her chin, Macha shook her head in agreement,  
“He’s not dumb, far from it I sense a deadly and fierce intelligence emanating from him” she said.  
Missy smiled up at her again, “Well I guess that means that he’s as tough as I thought he was then. I mean to want to pick a fight with you, you’d have to be really dumb or really tough and if he’s not dumb then I guess that makes him really tough” she said which caused Macha to smile at her.  
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It was only at that point and he really kicked himself for not even noticing this sooner, that he spotted that they could communicate with each other, at first he’d just thought that the little girl was talking to Macha and Macha was just following her around looking like she was listening like a pet would with its master, but with these two it was different, he seemed to be getting half of an actual conversation that was going on between the two of them.  
“Hey Missy” Aiden called out as he decided that he’d had enough of sitting on the bed and he raised himself up to his feet, he was slightly unsteady at first as a bout of dizziness from the blow to his head hit him, but it soon passed and he steadied. As he did he looked up and noticed that Macha had moved directly to his right now and was less than six feet from him, he couldn’t help but be impressed by how graceful she must be to be able to move that quietly while being that big.  
“Yes Mr Reaper?” the young girl asked walking over to him,   
“Does Macha speak to you?” he asked bluntly, he’d thought about trying to coax the info out of her using another approach but he got the feeling that with this girl the direct approach was the best one,   
“Well yes and no” Missy said smiling at him, he cocked his head curiously at her,   
“She doesn’t speak using her mouth like you or me do, it more like I hear what she’s saying in my head” Missy continued when she saw his obvious confusion, Aiden’s jaw dropped open, he’d always had a suspicion that Xeno’s were telepathic as their battle strategies and movements were way to precise to be uncoordinated, but there had always been the arguments for chemical signals, but he’d never heard of another species being able to understand them.  
“Wow so she can actually speak then?” he said thoughtfully looking at her, Missy nodded,   
“So what does she say to you?” he asked curiously, without a hesitation she looked him right in the eye and said,   
“She thinks you’re playing dumb to try and get her angry when you say that you don’t believe that she saved me”.  
Aiden’s mouth dropped open in shock, he was amazed that Macha had seen through his ploy so easily, he glanced now at the Xeno queen and he could have sworn that she had a smug look plastered across her face, a look that was instantly replaced with a look which could only be described as a mixture of shock and horror at Missy’s next words, “Would you like to hear her too?” she asked.  
Aiden looked at the young girl with look of surprise plastered over his face, to his left he couldn’t see Macha doing ‘No-way’ hand signals to Missy who totally ignored her, “Wait you mean there’s a way for me to hear her too?” he asked curiously, Missy smiled sweetly and nodded happily,   
“Oh yes but for me to tell you it’s going to cost you” Missy said now glancing at a now scowling Macha who looked like she was about to full on sulk, Aiden raised an eyebrow at her,  
“Cost me?” he said curiously with a hint of worry in his voice, Missy smiled sweetly again but Aiden spotted the hit of slyness in her smile,  
“Yup and the price is one kiss” she said with a big smile.  
Aiden smiled and wiped his brow as he breathed a soft sigh of relief, “Well that’s not too bad of a price, I think I can do that” he said with a grin, Missy smiled broadly,   
“Ok then close your eyes” she said, Aiden grinned guessing the youngster must be nervous, so he closed his eyes as asked and pursed his lips for the kiss,   
“Ok your up Macha” Missy’s voice said from right next to him, damn the kid was stealthy he hadn’t even heard her move, then his brain froze as it registered what she’d just said.  
Aiden’s eyes snapped open, stood right in front of his face was Macha the sulking hybrid queen Xenomorph and he was getting a really good close up of her face.   
He had to admit there was something rather striking and regal about her features, her hide looked soft and very smooth, he was almost tempted to reach out and touch her, but then his brain fired back into what was happening here and he opened his mouth in shock to protest.   
Before he could even think to speak let alone protest Macha opened her Yaujta like mandibles and her outer jaws along with them, then with one quick fluid movement she struck.  
Seizing hold of Aiden’s head with both her hands she moved forwards and clamped her mandibles to the sides of his face, to his surprise her grip on him wasn’t painful at all, it was almost pleasant. Due to the closeness of their faces Aiden could feel the large lips that covered her mouth pressed against his own and to his shock they were really warm and soft, for some reason he’d always imagined that their skin would be cool to the touch, but hers most definitely wasn’t, as his mouth was already open due to the shock she had no problem or resistance with the next part and Aiden felt her inner jaws and what could only be described as her tongue enter his mouth.  
It was at this point Aiden’s brain pretty much exploded with sensations, first there was the taste, it was like nothing he’d ever imagined in his life, given that he’d been up close with Xeno’s on multiple occasions he’d always imagined that their saliva would be thick and viscous, not that he’d ever really had a reason to imagine what it tasted like but what he imagined was definitely not raspberries.  
Then there was the feeling, her long, smooth, soft and powerful tongue simple pushed his much smaller one to one side, but not before pausing slightly to investigate it curiously, Aiden’s tongue was pressed so tightly to hers that he could feel the dense and powerful muscles inside it and the blood pumping through them.  
That’s when he felt the sensation of something thick and kinda sweet being pumped directly into his throat and it nearly triggered his gag reflex, but before he could properly start gagging Macha released him and withdrew her tongue from his mouth, albeit rather slowly as she dragged hers along his on the way out.  
As soon as she was clear she stepped back from him and Aiden dropped to his knees coughing violently, “This next part is not so pleasant” Missy said,   
“W-W-Wha…….” Aiden started to say but before he could finish a wave of blackness passed through his mind and he collapsed onto the floor unconscious.  
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As Macha watched the human fall unconscious she felt a sudden wave of concern flash through her mind, she bent down and scooped him up from the floor and placed him slowly back in Missy’s nest again, as she looked at his unconscious face a million and one emotions seemed to be swirling through her mind all at once, all competing for her attention.  
As she looked at him she noticed some of his hair had fallen over his face when she’d laid him down. Reaching out with a long finger she gently brushed it back over his ear and out of the way. As she looked at his face she had to admit to herself that he was rather pleasing to look at, stubborn and sneaky but at least he was pleasant to look at.  
As her finger made contact with his soft warm skin she felt a wash of emotion again, but this time it wasn’t her own, it was his. What she felt was like a trickle at first but it rapidly grew into a full on tsunami flowing off him, for a second she struggled to understand what was happening as his emotions flooded her mind like a marching band bursting in while playing at full volume.   
It took her a second to realise just what the hell was happening and when she did she stared at the unconscious human in utter disbelief, her royal jelly hadn’t just created a bridge for them to communicate with, somehow it had created a telepathic link the likes of which was even stronger than that of the one reserved for Xenos of the same hive.  
Macha suddenly found herself bombarded with Reaper’s memories, the first of which became clear in her mind was his real name was Aiden O’Connor.  
Her whole body went ridged as his memories flooded through her mind in waves, she experienced his entire life in a rapid fast forwards but each and every memory was a clear as if they were her own, that’s when the pain came.  
Macha collapsed on her back on the flaw and frantically began clawing at her own body, Missy ran to her and dropped to her side with fear and confusion painted all over her face, she started screeching and wailing at full volume, instantly Missy dropped to her side and tried to grab hold of one of her flailing hands, “Macha what’s wrong? What’s happening?” the youngster yelled, but Macha couldn’t respond to her or even really acknowledge her as right at that second her entire body felt like it was on fire.  
Eventually after what felt like an eternity but was really no more than a few seconds the pain subsided and passed, Macha slowly sat up on the floor panting like a hot dog, the first thing she saw was Missy’s concerned face, “I’m ok now” she said to the youngster in a breathless voice,   
“What the hell was that?” Missy asked concern in her voice,   
“Memories, his memories” Macha said,  
“Memories did that?” Missy said sounding both concerned and frightened, Macha looked at her right arm to make sure that it was really still there,   
“Pain, so much pain. How is it possible for one being to endure so much pain and still be functioning?” she said quietly more to herself than to Missy who was looking rather confused right now.  
Looking from her arm to the unconscious human the first thing that Macha’s eyes locked onto was his mechanical right arm and again the pain associated with it flashed through her mind like a lightning bolt. Then another thought occurred to her, this bond that had just been forged between them was stronger than anything she had ever felt before, even stronger than the one she’d even felt with Tyler.   
With him he’d allowed her to walk through his memories, but she’d always really only watched them as if she was an outsider but she’d never realised it, she’s only ever really felt his surface emotions and feelings but now she realised that’s all she’d really felt.   
To her in her little pain filled dark world it had been such a wonderful escape that she’d clung on like it was real and only now that she’d been so desperate to experience these things that her own mind had filled in the blanks with what it approximated those missing feelings to be like, but with Aiden she’d gotten it all raw and unfiltered, every pain, every fear, every love and every triumph and she’d lived it in a few seconds as if it was her own life.  
Macha was confused as hell by this, how could a human bond with her so completely like this? Even now as he laid there she could peer into his mind and she could see his dreams just like Tyler let her do, but unlike with him where she always knew that they were someone else’s memories and dreams, with him they felt like they were her own.  
She needed to clear her head, standing up and raising to her full height so suddenly that it startled the still concerned looking Missy who was still looking at her, “I’m going to get some air” she announced and before the young hatchling had a chance to respond she took a few fast steps and jumped from the platform and onto the wall, using her powerful claws she climbed the wall and disappeared into the shadows of the ceiling before opening a high window and climbing out of it.  
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Aiden groaned loudly as his senses realigned, his head felt like it had a thousand angry Xeno’s running around screeching their arses off inside it. As he struggled to sit up he became aware that it was a lot darker suddenly. “You’re awake! Thank the gods I was beginning to think that you never wake up!” Missy’s voice said from his left.  
Slowly turning his head his eyes slowly focused in the soft flickering light of the candle she was holding on the concerned and relived looking young girl, the light seemed to give her fur a fiery sheen to it, “How long was I out?” he asked still trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head, he kept getting odd flashes in his mind of a cold and dark place and the face of a man that he was sure he’d never met before but for some reason seemed to know really well.  
“About three hours” Missy said, Aiden’s eyes widened in surprise,   
“Wow I’ve known some good kissers in my time. But no-one who could knock a guy out for three hours with a single kiss before” he said more to himself than to Missy but she still giggled all the same,   
“Yeah her kiss is really something isn’t it?” she said, Aiden rubbed the back of his head with a little embarrassment,   
“You got that right, not that I’ve ever really ever thought of kissing a Xeno before but I suppose life is all about experiences right? And as they go that’s gotta be the king of all bragging rights, it’s like oh you pulled a pretty girl? Well I snogged a fucking Xeno Queen!” Aiden said putting on a silly over macho voice causing Missy to laugh again.  
“You almost sound like you enjoyed it” Missy said smiling at him slyly, Aiden quickly looked around himself and noticed that Macha wasn’t anywhere nearby, then he looked back at Missy,   
“I can tell you now kiddo, I’ve kissed a hell of a lot worse. On the grand scale of it all, she wasn’t half bad” he said slowly getting to his feet, Missy grinned broadly at him,   
“I’ll be sure to tell her when she comes back” Missy said, Aiden shot her a glance,   
“Don’t you fucking dare” he said and Missy dissolved into fits of giggles.  
Stretching his aching muscles Aiden looked around properly for the first time since he’d got here. The place was a heavy machinery factory that obviously manufactured heavy farming equipment. Moving over to one of the guard rails he looked down at the pitch black factory floor, as he did his night vision kicked in and everything took on a grey tone.  
“Where’s Macha gone?” he asked curiously as he noticed that he couldn’t see the big Xeno queen anywhere,   
“She said she needed to clear her head and she went out up there” Missy said pointing upwards to a window high above their heads,   
“Clear her head why?” Aiden asked curiously, Missy just shrugged,   
“Don’t know but it could have something to do with your memories, they seemed to shake her up pretty bad” Missy said, Aiden’s head snapped towards her,   
“What did you say?” he asked with his voice taking on a much darker tone, Missy looked startled at the sudden change in him,   
“Well when she kissed you, she said something about your memories and a lot of pain, in fact she seemed really shook up by it all” Missy said quickly, Aiden banged both his hands down on the guard rail with a loud bang, his mechanical arm bent the rail where it struck and the noise caused Missy to jump.   
“She had no fucking right to go crawling around in my head!” Aiden said with a growl in his voice,   
“I-I-I-I don’t think she meant to” Missy said in rather scared sounding voice as she looked at the large dent that his mechanical arm had caused, glancing at her Aiden realised that he’d rather scared the poor girl with his outburst, taking a deep breath he forced himself to calm down.  
“Sorry I didn’t mean to scare you” he said his voice softening as he did, Missy gave him an indignant look,   
“I-I-I wasn’t scared” she lied which caused Aiden to smile slyly,  
“Oh really?” he asked, as he did he gripped the rail with his mechanical hand and slowly closed it till it crushed the metal flat as paper between his fingers, as he did he saw her eyes widen and he burst out laughing, Missy glanced up at him and saw that his eyes were bright and happy again and she realised that he was just winding her up,   
“That’s not funny!” she said with a huff in her voice, Aiden grinned broadly,   
“I beg to differ” he said.  
Missy looked back at his mechanical arm again, “Just how strong is that thing?” she asked, Aiden glanced down at his hand and flexed the finger,   
“Don’t really know if I’m honest, I’ve never maxed it out, but I can punch through a Tritanium blast door with it” he said looking at the jet black coloured hand,   
“How did you get it? What happened to your real hand?” Missy asked curiously approaching him for a better look at the arm, Aiden glanced at the curious young feline girl as she looked at his arm in fascination,   
“Long story kiddo and not one I really feel like telling, suffice to say that it was painful” he said in a soft voice, Missy looked from his arm to his face and back again, her expression showed obvious disappointment that he wouldn’t share it with her, but she nodded in understanding,   
“Well will you tell me why you call yourself Reaper when your name’s Aiden?” Missy asked which caused Aiden’s eyebrows to shoot up in surprise, then he instantly figured out how she knew that,   
“Macha told you that huh?” he asked, she nodded slowly while still inspecting his arm closely, it seemed the Xeno queen had been pretty deep into his mind which kinda worried him a little, what else did she know about him?  
“Reaper is my codename, Aiden is my real name” he said slowly, Missy looked confused,   
“Codename?” she asked,   
“I’m part of a military unit called the Spirits, we are each given a codename to identify ourselves with, it’s so people don’t learn who we really are” he said honestly, he figured it would be pointless to lie to her as she could probably just ask Macha to tell her and he didn’t know how much more she knew,   
“Why wouldn’t you want people to know who you really are?” Missy asked confused, Aiden smiled,  
“Because the existence of my team is a secret” Aiden said, Missy nodded seeming to understand but she still looked confused a bit.  
“So where is the rest of your team?” she asked, Aiden looked thoughtful for a moment,   
“That’s a damn good question, we all got separated on entry, we came down using high speed drop pods from orbit and we got shot at so our pods spread out before landing, add on top of that my radio is damaged so I can’t call them, so they could be anywhere” Aiden said, Missy looked thoughtful,  
“So you’re all alone?” she asked, Aiden nodded and Missy looked sadly at the floor for a moment,   
“I know how that feels” she said quietly, but then before he could say anything her head snapped up and she was smiling at him,   
“But now I’ve got you and Macha, so I’m not alone anymore and you have me and Macha, so you’re not alone anymore and Macha has you and me, so she’s not alone anymore either” she said happily, Aiden couldn’t help but smile at the young girl’s enthusiasm.  
A sudden crash behind them made them both jump and spin around to see what was going on, the sound had come from the factory floor in the direction of the blast door that Aiden had come through, “What was that?” Missy asked her voice sounding scared again, before Aiden could answer there was another crash, Aiden suddenly noticed a large dent appear in the frame of the blast door,   
“Fuck they must have followed me here and now they’re trying to get in!” he said,  
“What followed you? The monsters in the sewers?” Missy asked, Aiden looked at her quickly,   
“I need my guns quickly!” he said, without word she quickly ran off and retrieved Aiden’s PIMP from where she and Macha had stashed it after bringing him up here.   
Aiden quickly snatched it from her and flicked it into sniper mode, as he did another crash was heard but this time it was followed by another one as the door flew off its mountings and into the factory floor.


End file.
